2026 Men's Volleyball Club World Championship: Perugia Defend Their Crown as Southeast Asia Debuts

A weekend evening in Hai Phong. Three former national team players crowd around an old laptop, one shelling peanuts, the others arguing about who served harder back when they still played. Our livestream still draws more than 5,000 viewers. With more than 5,000 people watching three former national team players on livestream, I am no longer alone.

Then someone reads out the long name that has just appeared on the screen: Jakarta Bhayangkara Presisi. The room goes quiet for about three seconds. Southeast Asia will be at the 2026 Men's FIVB Volleyball Club World Championship.

My mind goes to Moscow. I went to Moscow to record a press conference and came back with a new list of friends. A list of eight clubs carries the same kind of power: it is information, but it is also a map of relationships across an entire volleyball ecosystem.

Eight names, four continents

The International Volleyball Federation has announced the eight clubs that will contest the 2026 Men's Club World Championship, hosted by Poland. Poland will also stage the 2027 edition, a two-year agreement that signals this governing body prefers a stable destination over a new city every year.

The eight teams span four continents: Perugia of Italy, the reigning world champions and reigning CEV Champions League winners; Sada Cruzeiro and Vôlei Renata of Brazil; Ziraat of Türkiye; Foolad Sirjan Iranian of Iran; Al Ahly of Egypt; and Jakarta Bhayangkara Presisi of Indonesia. Ticket and schedule information, according to the announcement, will be released in due course.

For Southeast Asian readers, the most striking detail is the last name on that list: Jakarta Bhayangkara Presisi are the first Indonesian men's club to win an Asian continental title, and they are competing on the world stage for the first time. No Vietnamese men's club appears on the list, and none ever has.

Four schools of play colliding

Looking at those eight names, I see four schools of play. Perugia and Ziraat represent European power volleyball: high-tempo wing attacks, thick blocking, heavy serving. Sada Cruzeiro and Vôlei Renata carry the South American style, balanced, athletic, superb at handling high balls. Foolad Sirjan Iranian and Jakarta Bhayangkara Presisi carry the Asian gene: defence, ball recovery, fast combination play. Al Ahly carry the African quality: full of physical power and explosiveness, but often short of composure at the decisive points.

Perugia's value lies in being able to change personnel without changing the system. Their squad features Oleh Plotnytskyi and Simone Giannelli, a Ukrainian attacking spearhead and Italy's first-choice setter. But what makes Perugia frightening is their depth, combined with their status as reigning world champions and CEV Champions League winners.

Sada Cruzeiro sit on the opposite side in a different sense: five-time champions. For this club, big matches are routine. They do not need time to settle on the big stage, and their hands do not shake in the fifth set.

Ziraat and Jakarta are the unknowns. Their clearest disadvantage is not pure skill but experience at this level: the speed of decision-making, the quality of serving while trailing, the handling of net-touch calls. Their advantage is that they have nothing to lose.

A short format is the enemy of the weak and the friend of the consistent. With eight teams, recent editions have typically been split into two groups of four with semifinals to follow, meaning a champion must win continuously with no room for an off night. That makes squad depth more important than any single outstanding individual.

Travel deserves a seat at the table. Poland is a convenient destination for Perugia and Ziraat. For Sada Cruzeiro, Vôlei Renata, Al Ahly, Foolad Sirjan Iranian and Jakarta, it means a long flight, a time-zone shift of several hours, and a compressed window for getting used to the arena. In volleyball, a body needs roughly three to four sessions for footwork timing to return to normal. Based on my experience covering matches across many Asian tournaments, teams that travel far often drop the first set for that reason rather than for being weaker.

On transfers, expensive signings usually serve the brand, while real value lies in how smaller clubs choose their people. Perugia buy stars to protect the commercial standing of a leading European club, and that makes sense for them. But look at Vôlei Renata or Foolad Sirjan Iranian and you see another road: less money, players who fit the system, homegrown development, long-serving squad members. Those two roads meet on the same court in Poland, and the result does not always belong to the side with more money.

At the same time, workload deserves a straight look. Perugia do not only play this tournament. Plotnytskyi and Giannelli also play in Serie A and for their national teams. When the domestic calendar is crowded, rotation at a club world championship is often described as scientific load management, but seen from inside the profession it is sometimes a choice of which competition to protect for a more important match. Every club has to choose, and the club that pays the star's monthly salary usually decides.

The counterintuitive angle

The greatest value of this tournament for Asia and Africa is not the trophy. Jakarta might lose all three group matches. But every set against a European side is a lesson money cannot buy: serving speed, blocking height, reaction time, and how a world-class setter distributes the ball against a two-man block. In Indonesia's domestic league, no opponent creates that ceiling. One trip to Poland can change a generation of players in a way ten years of domestic training camps cannot.

A second point rarely discussed: when a world championship berth carries commercial value, continental federations are forced to run their Asian and African championships more seriously. The continental trophy suddenly carries new weight, and that is a healthy sign for regional volleyball.

A third point concerns the host nation. The current list of eight has no Polish representative. If a wild card is added later, that is a major home advantage. If not, Poland will host a tournament without a team of its own. My reading leans towards the former, since recent editions have usually included the host.

And then there is our own situation. No Vietnamese men's club has ever appeared at a club world championship. That gap is not about talent, and it is not about height; it is about not yet having a domestic league long enough for a club to make a living from the sport, professional enough for players to know what to train in a ten-month cycle, and credible enough for sponsors to see the value of long-term investment.

Jakarta Bhayangkara Presisi did not reach Poland through a miracle. They reached it through years of building a club with a system, then winning Asia and receiving a world championship berth as a natural consequence. At 60 I still think of myself as the girl jumping and screaming in the stands at Lach Tray, and I still believe that one day I will read a Vietnamese men's club on a list like this. But belief alone is not enough. Over the next ten years, will we build a domestic league long enough for that, or keep waiting for a wild card?