2020 FIVB Volleyball Women's Nations League


The 2020 FIVB Volleyball Women's Nations League is the third edition of the FIVB Volleyball Women's Nations League, an annual women's international volleyball tournament. 2020 version of VNL originally was scheduled to start earlier than the previous edition due to the 2020 Summer Olympics in July. The preliminary phase was scheduled to be held in five weeks between May 19 and June 21, 2020.
The final phase was scheduled to be held during July 1 to 5, but on March 13, 2020 the FIVB decided to postpone the Nations League until after the 2020 Summer Olympics caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. After that on May 8 the FIVB cancelled the third edition of VNL to next year with retaining both Italy and China as the host nations for the Finals.

Qualification

sixteen teams qualified for the competition. Twelve of them qualified as core teams which could not face relegation. Other four teams were selected as challenger teams which could be relegated from the tournament. Canada as winner of 2019 Challenger Cup earned the right to participate in this tournament replacing Bulgaria, the last placed challenger team after the 2019 edition.
QualificationQualifier
Core teams
Core teams
Core teams
Core teams
Core teams
Core teams
Core teams
Core teams
Core teams
Core teams
Core teams
Core teams
Challenger teams
Challenger teams
Challenger teams
Challenger teams

Format

Preliminary round

The 16 teams compete in a round-robin format with every core team hosting a pool at least once. The teams are divided into 4 pools of 4 teams at each week and compete five weeks long, for 120 matches. The top five teams after the preliminary round join the hosts of the final round to compete in the final round. The relegation takes into consideration only the 4 challenger teams. The last ranked challenger team will be excluded from the 2020 Nations League. The winners of the Challenger Cup will qualify for the next edition as a challenger team.

Final round

The six qualified teams play in 2 pools of 3 teams in round-robin. The top 2 teams of each pool qualify for the semifinals. The pool winners play against the runners-up in this round. The semifinals winners advance to compete for the Nations League title. The losers face each other in the third place match.

Pools composition

The overview of pools was released on September 13, 2019.

Preliminary round

Final round

Venues

Preliminary round