Women’s Olympic Qualification Tracker

Note: This article has been updated to reflect the changes made in the qualification system after the Tokyo Olympics postponement due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Olympic qualification.

These are the two words you’ll hear more and more often anytime you chat about beach volleyball with your friends over the next six 18 months. With the Tokyo 2020 Olympics coming right around the corner, the biggest priority for all teams competing internationally this semester is to secure their spots at the Japanese capital next in the summer of 2021.

We’ve already prepared a comprehensive and detailed guide with everything you need to know about beach volleyball Olympic qualification (make sure you spare a few minutes to read it), but we understand it could be hard for you to keep track of the multiple qualification pathways, so here’s your place to do it.

We’ll update this page every week and here’s where you’ll be able to follow the progress of each of the four Olympic qualification systems until the final list is confirmed. Before we check the status of each of the pathways, here are a few things you need to know:

• 24 teams in each gender will compete at the Olympics and the qualification period runs from September 1, 2018 to June 15, 2020 June 14, 2021
• Olympic berths earned by teams are owned by their respective national federations, meaning these organizations are the responsible for picking the duos that will actually compete at the Olympics. Brazil, for example, has already decided to send Alison Cerutti/Álvaro Filho and Evandro Gonçalves/Bruno Schmidt regardless of what the final rankings look like. That will most likely not be the norm, though - expect most of the federations to send to Tokyo the very same teams that earned the spots.
• A player can only qualify his country through one of the four pathways – once they secure a spot, they are no longer eligible to qualify through a second route
• Hosts Japan are guaranteed one spot in each gender

Now that you know the basics, let’s see where each of the four qualification pathways stands:

2019 Beach Volleyball World Championship

When? June 28-July 7, 2019

Where? Hamburg, Germany

How? The winners of the 2019 World Championship automatically secure one Olympic spot to their country.

Status: Completed

Qualified Team: Sarah Pavan/Melissa Humana-Paredes (Canada)

Beach Volleyball Olympic Qualification Tournament

When? September 18-22, 2019

Where? Haiyang, China

How? The two teams that win their playoff series in the tournament secure one Olympic spot each to their countries.

Status: Completed

Qualified Teams: Tina Graudina/Anastasija Kravcenoka (Latvia) & Liliana Fernández/Elsa Baquerizo (Spain)

Beach Volleyball Continental Cup

When? June 1, 2018-June 28, 2020 -June 27, 2021

Where? Multiple locations

How? The Continental Cup is comprised of three stages and it reunites countries from a same geographical region that play in a country vs country format with two teams representing each nation. The winners of each of the five Continental Cup’s Final Rounds secure one Olympic spot each to their countries.

Status: In progress

Qualified Nations: None yet

Countries in contention:

Africa – Egypt, Gambia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sudan and Zambia

Asia – Australia, China, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vanuatu.

Europe – Austria, Belarus, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and Ukraine.

NORCECA (North, Central America and Caribbean) – Canada,  Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Lucia, Trinidad & Tobago, USA and U.S. Virgin Islands.

South America - Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Venenzuela.

Beach Volleyball Olympic Ranking

When? September 1, 2018-June 14, 2020 -June 15, 2021

Where? Multiple locations

How? The Olympic rankings are determined by the sum of the best 12 results of each team in FIVB World Tour events, the World Championships and recognized Continental Tour finals. A team needs to have at least 12 finishes to be eligible to qualify via the Olympic rankings. The 15 highest ranked teams as of June 15, 2020 June 14, 2021 secure one Olympic spot each to their countries respecting the maximum of two quota places per nation.

Status: In progress

What the ranking looks like now:

Here’s the top-30 of the Olympic ranking now. This list will be updated as eligible tournaments are played and the teams in bold are the ones that would be qualified if the process ended today.

* Already qualified through a different pathway

** Exceeds country maximum quota of qualified teams

*** Not enough eligible finishes