2026 Club World Championship: Eight Clubs, Four Continents, and Vietnam's Empty Seat

I reopened the list of eight clubs for the 2026 FIVB Men's Club World Championship three times in one morning. The first time to check the spelling. The second time to look for a Vietnamese name. The third time, I stopped at the line “Jakarta Bhayangkara Presisi” and sat quiet for a while. That Indonesian men's side had just become the country's first men's club to win the AVC Men's Champions League, and with it a place at the club world championship. In Da Nang I once sat in the arena watching Vietnam's men's team face Indonesia at the SEA Games, hearing the stands scream themselves hoarse. People call me a shock merchant, but I only say what others have not dared to say: the gap between the two men's volleyball nations is no longer measured in regional medals, but in places at the club world championship.

FIVB has announced the eight clubs for the 2026 FIVB Men's Club World Championship, hosted in Poland. The eight teams come from four continents. Italy's Perugia are the reigning club world champions and the newly crowned CEV Champions League winners, with two names worth noting in the squad: Oleh Plotnytskyi and Simone Giannelli. Brazil's Sada Cruzeiro have won this tournament five times, joined by Vôlei Renata, also of Brazil. Al Ahly represent Africa. Foolad Sirjan Iranian represent Iran. Turkey's Ziraat and Indonesia's Jakarta Bhayangkara Presisi are first-time participants. Details on the schedule and ticketing will be announced later. FIVB also confirmed Poland will host again in 2027.

This is a club-level event, unconnected to Olympic qualification or national teams. Entry comes via continental titles or invitations. The list is therefore a mirror of each country's domestic league quality, not of national-team form.

The real structure of world club volleyball is a two-pole axis, and every story about expansion is decoration around that axis. Perugia sit at the European pole, with a recruitment machine that lets them gather stars from everywhere. Sada Cruzeiro sit at the South American pole with five titles, a depth that makes them the tournament's own yardstick. The other four teams come from four different ecosystems: Egypt, Iran, Turkey, Indonesia. On paper it is a pretty picture of globalisation. In practice, the material gap between the leading group and the rest remains wide, and a short match format can only shrink the difference, not erase it.

More interesting is the road each team travelled. European club volleyball runs through the CEV Champions League, where an Italian or Polish club plays dozens of high-quality matches each season before stepping onto the world stage. South American volleyball runs through the CSV Club Championship, where Sada Cruzeiro are the benchmark. Asia goes through the AVC Men's Champions League – the title Indonesia just won. The difference is not player talent. It is the number of elite matches a group gets to play together each year. Experience accumulates by match, not by training session.

Look at Perugia, and their biggest risk does not come from opponents. It comes from dependency itself. A team built around Giannelli at setter and Plotnytskyi at outside hitter loses its structure if either is absent, especially with the Serie A calendar running in parallel and the coaching staff forced to rotate. Based on my experience tracking matches, the strongest teams at club level usually lose to complacency in the group stage rather than to tactical defeat. Germany lost in 2026 not because their defence was weak, but because they forgot what Germans needed.

Behind the list sits an economic story rarely told. Jersey advertising is gradually replacing the bond between a club and its local community with a relationship between a global brand and a reach metric. A multinational sponsor does not care how many fans a club has at home; it cares how many countries the tournament is broadcast in. For FIVB, having Indonesia and Iran on the map is a condition for selling rights into two more markets. That is why a place at the club world championship carries commercial value far beyond the sporting value of a group-stage slot.

Alongside that, volleyball is walking the road esports walked first. Live data, from point totals to ball-contact positions, flows to bookmakers faster than the control mechanisms can process. Betting in esports is eroding competitive integrity faster than traditional sports because regulation lags, and volleyball has no reason to believe it is immune. A tournament bringing together eight clubs from four continents will generate an enormous volume of data, and that data has a price. The stadium was empty in 2026, yet I never heard the fans more clearly – and I never saw more clearly that what is being sold is not volleyball.

On the sporting side, the two most watchable teams outside the leading group are Ziraat and Al Ahly. Ziraat come from the Turkish Super League, a competition with money and imports, but they have never proven themselves at club world level. Al Ahly most likely have a core of Egypt national-team players who play together regularly – a weapon star-studded but disjointed squads do not have. Foolad Sirjan Iranian bring the speed and defence typical of Iranian volleyball. Jakarta are the most intriguing unknown: high motivation, a large online following, but domestic public pressure will weigh heavily if they lose quickly.

The Poland factor also deserves a mention. The host nation has no club in the list, unusual for a country with a volleyball tradition this strong. A wild card for a Polish representative could appear late, and if it does, the psychological picture of the tournament changes. For teams from South America, Asia and Africa, long-haul travel to Poland is a genuine variable: jet lag hits ball feel directly, and no training session fixes that in the first two days.

The easiest thing to say after reading the list is that Vietnamese volleyball needs more investment. I do not believe that is the main problem. The problem is the model: most Vietnamese men's clubs are units under local sports administrations, existing on a congress cycle, without the independent legal status to sign a three-year deal with a foreign expert, without enough autonomy to build a multi-season plan for the AVC Champions League. A club that cannot commit long term cannot get through continental qualifying. Losing two sponsors in 2026 taught me that the truth also needs a nice shirt – but that shirt must be sewn by the club itself, not by its supervising authority.

Where I could be wrong: Jakarta's AVC title may be a single crest of a wave, not a trend. Iranian volleyball has had bursts that then subsided. If Indonesia cannot hold their place over the next three years, every conclusion of mine about the gap will have to be rewritten. The ESFJ in me wants to please, but the hot-take in me chooses to wake people up.

My prediction: Perugia reach the final but are pushed to five sets by Sada Cruzeiro, and at least one of the two debutants, Ziraat or Jakarta, wins a group match against a higher-rated opponent. I am 49 and I still believe one sentence can change an entire season. And if Indonesia goes ahead of us again on the continental club stage in 2027, will we sit and analyse the causes one more time, or start writing a proposal?