FIVB Volleyball Men's World Championship Preview & Betting Guide

FIVB Volleyball Mens World Championship

Founded in 1949, the FIVB Volleyball Men's World Championship has, since 1962 taken place every four years in which a total of twenty-four countries compete for the gold medal.

FIVB Volleyball Men's World Championship Content

• FIVB Volleyball Men's World Championship Preview
• FIVB Volleyball Men's World Championship Past Winners
• FIVB Volleyball Men's World Championship Betting Tips
• FIVB Volleyball Men's World Championship Medal Table

Like a lot of these tournaments, the early years were dominated by the Soviet Union who made seven of the first ten tournament finals and in doing so went on to win a total of six gold medals.

There have been plenty of back-to-back champions in this tournament, the Soviet Union defended their titles in 1952, 1962 & 1982, Italy defended theirs in both 1994 & 1998, Brazil defended theirs in 2006 & 2010 and Poland defended their title in 2018.

2026 FIVB Volleyball Mens World Championship Preview

The 2026 tournament is yet to be confirmed who will be hosting, the last two tournaments have seen joint hosts which we could once again see in 2026.

Host nations have won a total of four tournaments, Poland being the last in 2014 but prior to that you have to go back to 1966 to find the last winning host which was Czechoslovakia.

FIVB Volleyball Mens World Championship Past Winners

Poland's success in 2018 was the second tournament running that they have beaten Brazil in the final having also beaten them in 2014 taking their tally of golds to three with success also in 1974. Italy won three on the bounce in 1990, 1994 & 1998 and then Brazil took over with three wins on the bounce in 2002, 2006 & 2010, in fact, Brazil has been involved in either the final or the third-place match in ten of the last eleven tournaments. Poland was looking to emulate what both Italy and Brazil achieved by winning three on the bounce with success in 2022 but were beaten finalists losing 3-1 to Italy.

FIVB Volleyball Mens World Championship Betting Tips

We have a Best Volleyball Tipsters page which you can visit during the tournament to get FIVB Volleyball Men's World Championship tips, on this page only the best volleyball tipsters are displayed, by that we mean only tipsters who have shown a profit over the past year for their volleyball predictions and those who currently have open tips. Alternatively, head over to the Volleyball Predictions page for not only predictions on the FIVB Volleyball Men's World Championship but also tips throughout the year on other tournaments too.

Favourite Statistics

The favourite's success rate was consistently in the 70% range over the three tournaments in 2010, 2014 & 2018 with the last two coming in at 79.61% and 77.66% and then in 2022, there was a jump in winning favourites with over 82% success rate. There have been a lot of short favourites, from the 431 matches over the last four tournaments, there has been a total of 120 favourites priced up 1.10 or shorter, odds of 1.10 converted to a chance percentage is 90.9% so given that 115 of those have been successful, that gives them a success rate of 95.83% which is good. When you start to get to odds of 1.41 or bigger than the favourites become less reliable with those only having a 49.38% success rate (40-81).

• 2010: 56-78 (71.79%)
• 2014: 82-103 (79.61%)
• 2018: 73-94 (77.66%)
• 2022: 43-52 (82.69%)
• Overall: 211-275 (76.73%)

Set Score Statistics

A total of 196 games of the 431 played over the last three tournaments have ended in either a 3-0 or 0-3 scoreline, which is a massive 45% of the games. Throw in that another 147 of the games (34.11%) have ended in a 3-1/1-3 scoreline it would seem to indicate that a lot of the games are not too competitive, in fact, the average number of sets in a game works out at 3.75. Only 88 games, that is 20.42% of the games at the last four tournaments have needed all five sets to decide a winner.

• 3-0: 133 Games (30.86%)
• 3-1: 96 Games (22.27%)
• 0-3: 63 Games (14.62%)
• 3-2: 61 Games (14.15%)
• 1-3: 51 Games (11.83%)
• 2-3: 27 Games (06.26%)

FIVB Volleyball Mens World Championship Medal Table

The early years were dominated by the Soviet Union which sees them top the medal table with a total of eleven medals, six of those being gold medals and that is double the number of gold that Brazil, Italy and Poland have all won three golds apiece. In total there have only been seven countries to win the gold medal, those four already mentioned, Czechoslovakia with two and then one each for both East Germany and the USA.