The city on the River Elbe is no stranger to hosting FIVB beach volleyball competitions. In 2017 and 2018 Hamburg hosted the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour Finals and in 2016 it hosted a Major Series tournament. It will be the second time that Germany has hosted the World Championships following Berlin 2005.
Once again the 13,000-capacity Rothenbaum Stadium will be at the centre of the action as 48 teams per gender seek to succeed Laura Ludwig and Kira Walkenhorst, and Evandro Goncalves and Andre Stein as women’s and men’s world champions.
As well as the glory of being named world champions the winners will also earn their National Olympic Committee a place at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games beach volleyball competition.
Hamburg 2018 will take the World Championships to the next level following the success of the Netherlands 2015 edition which was the first to make the tournament multi-venue, while Austria 2017 staged a spectacular event in a 10,000-capacity stadium on the banks of the River Danube.
Prior to this year’s FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships in Hamburg, previous World Championships have been held in the United States (Los Angeles, 1997), France (Marseille,1999), Austria (Klagenfurt, 2001, Vienna 2017), Brazil (Rio de Janeiro, 2003), Germany (Berlin, 2005), Switzerland (Gstaad, 2007), Norway (Stavanger, 2009), Italy (Rome, 2011), Poland (Stare Jablonki, 2013), the Netherlands (The Hague-Amsterdam-Apeldoorn-Rotterdam, 2015).