Start of 2019 FIVB Men’s and Women’s Volleyball Challenger Cup this week

The women’s tournament starts this week and will be held from 26 to 30 June in Lima, Peru. That is closely followed by the men’s tournament which will be held in Ljubljana, Slovenia from 3 to 7 July.

The Volleyball Challenger Cup is a new competition created in the last few years designed to complement the Volleyball Nations League, with the prize for the winner in the men’s and women’s competition being promotion to next year’s edition, replacing the bottom-ranked of the Challenger teams in the VNL.

The first edition of the FIVB Volleyball Challenger Cup took place last year. In the women’s competition, it was Bulgaria who won their berth to the 2019 edition of the Volleyball Nations League, while Portugal were victorious on home soil to take part in the competition this year.

The winner of each Volleyball Challenger Cup for 2019 will qualify to play in the 2020 VNL, replacing the last-ranked of the Challenger teams in the 2019 VNL. These are Belgium, Bulgaria, the Dominican Republic and Poland in the women’s 2019 VNL; and Australia, Bulgaria, Canada and Portugal in the men’s event.

The tournaments will feature six teams per gender. In the women’s event it will be the hosts Peru coming up against two teams still be decided from Europe, Canada from the NORCECA (North & Central America and the Caribbean) region, Chinese Taipei from Asia and Argentina who were the winner of the Africa and South America playoff.

In the men’s competition the hosts Slovenia will be joined by two teams as-yet determined from Europe, Cuba from NORCECA, Egypt from the Africa region, plus the winners of the Asia and South America playoff.

In both the men’s and women’s competition, the six teams competing will be divided into two three-team pools for round-robin play with the top two of each pool advancing to the semi-finals, ahead of the 3rd-place playoff and Final.