Poland won the 2019 edition defeating Japan 3-1, while Italy ranked 3rd on May 18th, 2019 in Montreux. The « Azzurre » were crowned in 2018 ahead of Russia and Turkey. Our National Team, traditionally invited to take part in the tournament continues its progression and demonstrated it once more this year.
The everlasting challenge for our organisation is to be able to fit the Montreux Volley Masters into an already very busy international calendar, especially when the season culminates with the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2020. On the eve of the 35th edition, scheduled from May 11th to 16th, 2020, numerous contacts have been made with the best teams in the world to gather a new original palette. But, we could imagine that the above cited teams would all be willing to take revenge over Poland and bring over to the Pierrier their star players in May 2020, their answer turned out very disappointing. Indeed, the National Federations have chosen to play the first stage of the FIVB Volleyball Nations’ League (VNL) on their respective continent; hence, no Asian nor American teams will plan to travel to Europe at mid-May 2020 !
The income of our event being for a huge part linked to the participating teams in terms of TV rights and sponsoring, and, faced with the important loss foreseen in the absence of the Brazilian and of all Asian teams,
the Board of Directors of the Montreux Volley Masters is obliged to give up the organisation of the 2020 edition.
The organising committee will examine the situation for future years on the occasion of its next general assembly, at mid-February 2020.