What Is the Volleyball Nations League (VNL)?

The Volleyball Nations League, or VNL, is the top annual national-team volleyball tournament, organized by the sport's world governing body, the FIVB. It features separate men's and women's competitions, each with 16 national teams, and runs every summer. Launched in 2018, it replaced the older World League and World Grand Prix as volleyball's premier yearly international event.

Each gender's 16 teams play a preliminary round of matches spread across multiple weeks and host cities around the world, facing a rotating set of opponents. The best-performing teams — typically the top eight — then qualify for a Finals week at a single host, where a knockout bracket decides the champion. The [scoring](/how-volleyball-scoring-works/) follows standard international volleyball rules of best-of-five sets.

The VNL began in 2018, created by the FIVB to modernize and unify its top annual national-team competitions. It combined and replaced the men's World League and the women's World Grand Prix into a single branded event held each summer. Since then it has run annually, pausing only around major disruptions, and has grown into the sport's marquee yearly tournament.

On the men's side, France, Poland, Italy, the United States, Brazil and Japan are perennial contenders. On the women's side, Italy, Türkiye, Brazil, the United States, China and Poland lead the way. These nations regularly reach the Finals and supply most of the tournament's award winners — see our rundown of the [best VNL players](/vnl-best-players/) for the standout individuals.

The VNL is held every year, while the Olympics and World Championship come around every four years, so it is the most frequent showcase of top national teams. It also uses a long, multi-city preliminary round rather than a single-venue tournament. It carries prestige and world-ranking points, but the Olympic gold and world title remain the sport's ultimate prizes; the VNL is the flagship annual event between them.

Both. The FIVB runs a men's Volleyball Nations League and a women's Volleyball Nations League as parallel competitions, each with its own 16 teams, schedule, Finals and awards. They share the same format and branding but are separate tournaments with separate champions and MVPs each year.

The VNL has used a system of core teams and challenger teams, with a relegation-and-promotion mechanism so a bottom-placed side can be replaced by a challenger for the next edition. The exact rules have evolved over time. It borrows the [promotion and relegation](/promotion-and-relegation-explained/) idea from other sports to keep the field competitive and give emerging nations a path in.