Starting from this staging, the World Championship will be expanded to include 32 teams, increasing from 24 teams.[1] The tournament will henceforth also be held biennially instead of quadrennially.[2]
At least five FIVB member associations have expressed interest in bidding for the hosting of the 2025 championship. As 2022, multiple hosts could be selected.[3] Philippines initially bid but later withdrew as "there were a lot of procedures and changes".[4] Vietnam withdrawn its bid on 29 August 2024 due to financial reasons.
The host country Thailand automatically qualified for the competition as well as the defending champions Serbia. The top three teams from each of the 2023 Continental Championships secured qualification. The final 15 places belonged to top 15 teams as per FIVB World Ranking who had not yet qualified.[12]
aThailand qualified on 5 September 2023 as Asian champions. Since they were awarded hosting rights on 30 August 2024, their spot was allocated to Vietnam, 4th placers of the tournament.
In the pool phase, the 32 teams will spread across eight pools of four teams playing in a round-robin system. The top two teams from each pool then advance to the direct elimination phase.
In the direct elimination phase, the 16 teams will be matched up into eight matches in a knock-out stage: the winners will advance to the next stage, and the losers will be eliminated from the competition.
Total number of victories (matches won, matches lost)
In the event of a tie, the following first tiebreaker will apply: The teams will be ranked by the most point gained per match as follows:
Match won 3–0 or 3–1: 3 points for the winner, 0 points for the loser
Match won 3–2: 2 points for the winner, 1 point for the loser
Match forfeited: 3 points for the winner, 0 points (0–25, 0–25, 0–25) for the loser
If teams are still tied after examining the number of victories and points gained, then the FIVB will examine the results in order to break the tie in the following order:
Set quotient: if two or more teams are tied on the number of points gained, they will be ranked by the quotient resulting from the division of the number of all set won by the number of all sets lost.
Points quotient: if the tie persists based on the set quotient, the teams will be ranked by the quotient resulting from the division of all points scored by the total of points lost during all sets.
If the tie persists based on the point quotient, the tie will be broken based on the team that won the match of the Round Robin Phase between the tied teams. When the tie in point quotient is between three or more teams, these teams ranked taking into consideration only the matches involving the teams in question.