Volleyball Nations League to only return to Macau in 2024

The FIVB Volleyball Women’s Nations League (VNL) is likely to return to Macau next year, the president of Sports Bureau (ID), Pun Weng Kun, told the media on the sidelines of the launching of the Dragon Boat Races event.

Responding to media, the ID president said, “In the previous years, the volleyball tournament [has] always gathered a lot of interest. We don’t know yet if it is in any way possible to return to Macau this year as we already have a lot of events on our calendar, but we have presented [a proposal] revealing our interest in organizing the event next year.”

The 2023 VNL is its fifth edition. The competition will be held between May 30 and July 16 and the final round will take place in College Park Center, Arlington, USA.

This year’s edition is already confirmed to take place in the neighboring region of Hong Kong where the Week 2 of Pool 3 of the preliminary round stage will take place.

The Hong Kong round will take place between June 13 and 18 and will have the participation of teams such as China, Bulgaria, Canada, Dominican Republic, Italy, Netherlands, Poland and Turkey.

Asia also has a significant role in hosting the Pool stage of the 2023 VNL event this year with four of six events to take place in Asian countries and regions, including Japan, South Korea, and Thailand, as well as Hong Kong. The only two events not hosted in Asia are to take place in Brazil and Turkey, respectively.

The last time Macau hosted an event was in 2019 with the 2020 edition being canceled amid the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak. The competition resumed in 2021 but without Macau as host of any event due to the border restrictions. These also stopped the competition from returning in 2022.