The 2022 Volleyball Men’s World Championship will take place across 10 host cities in Russia, including Moscow and St. Petersburg, organizers have announced.
The full list of host cities for the tournament, which will take place between August 26 and September 11, is Moscow, St Petersburg, Kaliningrad, Yaroslavl, Kazan, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Kemerovo, Ufa, and Krasnoyarsk.
Russia is set to host the tournament in spite of a ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in December 2020 that the country should not be allowed to host major international tournaments until December 2022 as part of sanctions handed out by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).
The sanctions had been handed down after the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) was found to be non-compliant because of manipulated data, purported to be linked to positive tests, provided in January 2019.
However, in this specific case, WADA has acknowledged that it will not be possible to move the tournament from Russia to another country.
The FIVB, volleyball’s global governing body, exploited a loophole in the CAS ruling – that Russia should be stripped of hosting these events “unless it is legally or practically impossible to do so.”
The governing body said in June this year that it had submitted a "comprehensive" report to WADA explaining why its showpiece event should remain in Russia.
Russia was first selected to host the 2022 Men’s World Championship at the FIVB Congress in November 2018.
St, Petersburg is the only city out of the 10 to have two venues on the list – the Ice Palace and Silbur Arena – while in Moscow, the VTB Arena is the venue selected.
