Men's European Volleyball Championship Preview & Betting Guide

Men's European Volleyball Championship

Established in 1948, the tournament, since 1975 has taken place every two years and currently a total of 24 teams compete which has been the case since 2019 having previously been 16 teams (2007-2017) and fewer before then.

Men's European Volleyball Championship Content

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

Italy's silver in 2023 finally moved them past the Soviet Union for the most number of medals, they have now won fifteen medals in total, however, the Soviet Union are still well ahead with twelve golds compared to Italy's seven whilst Poland has won eleven medals but only two of those has been gold, those three countries alone have won 40% of the 99 medals at the championships.

Italy is the country that has hosted this tournament the most, their co-hosting in 2023 was the fifth time they have hosted, co-hosts Bulgaria have now hosted it four times whilst the Czech Republic, Finland, France, the Netherlands and Poland have all hosted the tournament three times.

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2026 Men's European Volleyball Championship Preview

The Fédération Internationale de Volleyball have decided to make a change to continental competitions all being played in an even-numbered year which means instead of a 2025 tournament, the next tournament will be in 2026.

Like the past four tournaments, the 2026 Men's European Volleyball Championship will be co-hosted in four countries, so far only Romania has been picked as a host.

Poland will head into the tournament as defending champions after defeating after becoming only the fourth country to whitewash a final (3-0) under the current format since 1987 when they defeated Italy.

Can Poland make it back-to-back championship wins? It will be difficult, all of the last eight winners failed to win back-to-back championships, Italy was the last country to achieve this backing up their 2003 win in 2005.

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Men's European Volleyball Championship Past Winners

Poland will head into 2026 as the defending champions having won the 2023 tournament which was only their second gold medal, the other coming in 2009. Slovenia has been a nearly country of late, they were runners-up in 2015, 2019 & 2021 and in 2023 they picked up the bronze medal, could they win their maiden gold in 2026?

Men's European Volleyball Championship Betting Tips

During the Men's European Volleyball Championship, you will have two options on OLBG to find predictions on the matches. First of all, you can head over to the Volleyball Predictions page which will list each upcoming game, it will also highlight the outcome that has the most predictions.

Additionally, you can click on the games on that page and you will be taken to the match page which will list all of the markets and outcomes and the number of tips each has been given.

You can also try the Best Volleyball Tipsters, on this page we list volleyball tipsters, however, we only list those who have made a profit on the sport over the past year, meaning you are only getting tips from profitable tipsters, hence the 'Best Volleyball Tipsters' page name!

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Favourite Statistics

The favourite statistics show the overall success rate for favourites is mostly on par with the other men's tournaments, favourites have a success rate of 81% at the World Cup and 77% at the World Championships so this 80% is bang in the middle of those two. There have been a lot of short-priced favourites, in total one hundred and twenty-five have been priced up 1.10 or shorter, an implied probability of 91% or more and one hundred and fifteen of those have gone on to win, a success rate of 92%. Favourites priced up at 1.50 or bigger are the ones to potentially take on as they only have a 48% success rate (22-46).

• 2015: 27-36 (75.00%)
• 2017: 27-36 (75.00%)
• 2019: 61-76 (80.26%)
• 2021: 64-76 (84.21%)
• 2023: 59-76 (77.63%)
• Overall: 179-224 (79.91%)

Set Score Statistics

From the 300 games over the last five tournaments, the average number of sets to be completed is just 3.69 which means when you consider it only takes three sets to win then a lot of these must be finishing in a clean sweep. That has been the case in 152 of the games (3-0 or 0-3) which makes up 51% of the games, that is over half of the games! A massive 81% of the games (242) were complete in four sets or fewer whilst just 19% (58) of the game went the distance and needed five sets to decide the winner.

• 3-0: 86 Games (28.67%)
• 0-3: 66 Games (22.00%)
• 3-1: 42 Games (14.00%)
• 1-3: 48 Games (16.00%)
• 3-2: 25 Games (08.33%)
• 2-3: 33 Games (11.00%)

Men's European Volleyball Championship Medal Table

The Soviet Union dominated the early years of this tournament like much of volleyball in general, over the first seventeen tournaments (1948-1991), they picked up a total of twelve gold medals and between 1967 & 1987 they won nine consecutive tournaments! Italy had a spell in the 90s into the early 2000s when they won six from nine tournaments but their win in 2021 was their first since 2005.

Other Volleyball Blogs

As well as the men's tournaments linked above, we also cover the women's equivalence of each tournament too:

• FIVB Volleyball Women's World Cup
• Women's European Volleyball Championship
• FIVB Volleyball Women's World Championship
• CEV Women's Champions League