When the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour schedule was released earlier this year, the Hamburg Elite was listed as a tenuous TBC — to be confirmed.
Such a listing is never a promising sign in the world of beach volleyball, when events can be added and dropped with little warning. Sometimes this is a good thing, like Newport being a late addition in the fall of 2025. Sometimes this is a not so good thing, like when a Challenge in Egypt in 2023 was abruptly canceled just a few days before most players were set to board their flights.
Whatever the delay was, however, the TBC has been lifted on Hamburg, as it has officially been confirmed for August 5-9. It makes for a busy stretch for the Beach Pro Tour’s upper echelon. The week prior will feature an Elite in Rio de Janeiro, long one of the sport’s premier locations. Two weeks after Hamburg will be Montreal, one of the hottest stops on the Beach Pro Tour, with packed stands at Formula 1’s Gilles Villeneuve.
Three premier stops in nearly as many weeks, on three different continents.
The beach volleyball calendar is inarguably better with Hamburg in it. In an unofficial poll last year, players were asked — anonymously — to vote for which stops would be considered “majors” on the beach volleyball calendar. Ostrava and Gstaad were overwhelming favorites, with Hamburg a close third. Rio was a distant fourth, but it was also the only other stop receiving any notable number of votes.
There is reason for Hamburg’s popularity amongst the players.
The World Championships in 2019 packed the 14,000-seat Rothenbaum arena, and that type of crowd hasn’t been an aberration. It doesn’t always sell out, no, and last year, it took until Sunday to considerably fill it, but Hamburg remains one of the most-attended Elites of the year. The surrounding area is delightful, the food good, the field perpetually first-class.
It’s good to see it back on the schedule.
