2026 Men's European Volleyball Championship qualification

This article describes the qualification for the 2026 Men's European Volleyball Championship.

Qualification
Bulgaria, Finland, Italy and Romania as host countries were directly qualified. The eight best placed teams at the 2023 edition also gained direct entries into the tournament. 21 teams compete for the remaining 12 places at the final tournament.

Direct qualification
All of the hosted countries' teams directly qualified for the tournament. Then, the top eight teams from previous edition also automatically qualified.


 * 2023 Men's European Volleyball Championship final standing

Format
There being seven pools of either three teams each, the winners of each pool and the 5 best runners-up qualified for the 2026 European Championship. The pools were played in a double round-robin.

Schedule
The dates were updated to adapt to the new FIVB calendar.

Pools composition
The pools were set following the Serpentine system according to their European Ranking for national teams as of 6 November 2023. Rankings are shown in brackets.

Pool standing procedure

 * 1) Number of matches won
 * 2) Match points
 * 3) Sets ratio
 * 4) Points ratio
 * 5) If the tie continues as per the point ratio between two teams, the priority will be given to the team which won the last match between them. When the tie in points ratio is between three or more teams, a new classification of these teams in the terms of points 1, 2 and 3 will be made taking into consideration only the matches in which they were opposed to each other.

Match won 3–0 or 3–1: 3 match points for the winner, 0 match points for the loser

Match won 3–2: 2 match points for the winner, 1 match point for the loser

Results

 * The winners in each pool and the top five of the second ranked teams qualified for the 2026 European Championship.

Ranking of the second placed teams

 * Matches against the fourth placed team in each pool were not included in this ranking.
 * The top five of the second placed teams qualified for the 2026 European Championship.