Some of you may have searched for the Korean schedule while looking for Women’s Volleyball Nations League matches and wondered why you could not find it.
That is because there was none. Korea was not among the 18 countries in this tournament.
Not because it could not win matches, but because it was not eligible to compete.
Three-line summary
1. Five years after Kim Yeon-koung’s retirement, Korea was relegated from the VNL and dropped out.
2. It finished 18th out of 18 countries, with 1 win and 11 losses.
3. There is only one condition for returning: its world ranking.
What Is the VNL?
The Volleyball Nations League (VNL) is an annual national-team league organized by the International Volleyball Federation. Eighteen countries play preliminary rounds across multiple cities, and the top eight teams compete for the title in the Final Round. This year’s women’s Final Round was held in Macau.
It is not a tournament that comes around once every four years, like the World Cup. It is held every year, and the lineup changes every year. That second condition is the key point of this article.
The Country That Took Korea’s Place
According to a Newsis report, the Korean women’s national volleyball team finished the 2025 VNL 18th out of 18 countries, with 1 win, 11 losses, and 5 points. Thailand, which was competing to avoid last place, earned one point despite losing its final match, leaving Korea at the bottom.
Ukraine took that spot. The 2026 VNL was Ukraine’s first appearance, and this time it avoided relegation and advanced as far as the quarterfinal bracket.
The Rules Are Two Lines
The 2026 VNL participation regulations published by the International Volleyball Federation state the following:
The team that finishes last in the final standings is relegated. And that spot goes to the highest-ranked team in the world rankings at the conclusion of the tournament among teams not participating in that year’s VNL.
There is one more line. A relegated team cannot be eligible for promotion. In other words, the path to return immediately in the year it is relegated is blocked.
That narrows Korea’s route back to one: winning other tournaments and raising its world ranking. In the past, there was a separate promotion gateway such as the Challenger Cup, but the condition stated in the current regulations is ranking.
What Happened in June
Korea won the AVC Cup held in the Philippines in June 2026 with seven wins in seven matches. It beat Taiwan 25-19, 25-19, 25-22 in the final and did not lose a match from the group stage onward.
The title lifted Korea from 40th to 31st in the FIVB world rankings. Captain Kang So-hwi received the tournament MVP award.
The team that finished last in the VNL and the team that won an Asian tournament without a loss are the same team. Both are true. Different opponents produce results like this.
How Rankings Move
Once you know how world-ranking numbers rise and fall, those nine places look different.
The FIVB ranking system works by having the two teams exchange points in every match. It is not simply a fixed number of points for a win. Before the match, it calculates an expected result based on the gap in strength between the two teams, and points move according to how much better the actual result was than expected.
Set scores also count. A 3-0 win and a 3-2 win are calculated differently.
At the AVC Cup, Korea beat higher-ranked Vietnam 3-0 and gained 8.4 points from that one match. No matter how many times it beats lower-ranked teams, it will not rise by that much.
This is where the irony emerges. To raise its ranking substantially, it needs to face strong teams, but the tournament where strong teams are gathered is the VNL, which it currently cannot enter.
Five Years Have Passed Since Retirement
Kim Yeon-koung played for the national team from 2005 through 2021 and competed in three Olympics. Korea reached the semifinals in London in 2012 and Tokyo in 2021, and according to an MBC report, she retired from the national team in August 2021 after the Tokyo Games.
Over those five years, the national team lost its place on the global stage and then rebuilt a foothold on the Asian stage.
What stands out to me in this trajectory is the schedule, more than the record. The more often a team faces strong opponents, the more its ranking rises; and its ranking has to rise for it to enter tournaments where it can face strong opponents. That is why it is so difficult to return once a team falls out.
If you could not find Korea in a VNL broadcast, that was because of its ranking, not the broadcast lineup.
Instead, look to Asian tournaments and World Championship qualifiers. How far Korea can raise its ranking there will determine the next VNL lineup.
The number to remember is 31. How many more places Korea can climb from there is the condition for returning.
The rankings are updated after every match on the FIVB World Ranking page. If you compare the points next to Korea’s name once before and once after a tournament, you can immediately see how close that tournament brought it to the next VNL lineup. That is more accurate than wins and losses.
Sources
- Newsis Korean women’s volleyball team finishes VNL in last place
- MyDaily Ukraine avoids relegation in its first VNL appearance; women’s quarterfinal bracket set
- MyDaily Advances to the final with six straight AVC Cup wins… Cha Sang-hyun’s team jumps from 40th to 31st in the world rankings
- Newsis Women’s national volleyball team sweeps Taiwan 3-0 to win AVC Cup
- Volleyball World VNL 2026 Qualification System
- MBC “Volleyball Empress” Kim Yeon-koung announces retirement from the national team after the Tokyo Olympics
The promotion and relegation regulations follow official guidance from the International Volleyball Federation, while the results and rankings follow the reports above.