Beach Volleyball at the
2028 Summer Games
Beach volleyball at LA 2028 takes place in Long Beach — one of the busiest venue clusters on the program, also hosting boxing, swimming, and diving. A guide to the tournament, the venue, and the history of beach volleyball at the Summer Games.
LA 2028 Beach Volleyball Overview
LA 2028 beach volleyball takes place in Long Beach — one of the busiest venue clusters on the program, also hosting boxing, swimming, and diving. Beach volleyball consistently produces some of the loudest and most energetic atmospheres of any event at the Summer Games.
At LA 2028, beach volleyball is held in Long Beach — a venue cluster that also hosts boxing, swimming, and diving. For groups building a multi-sport trip, Long Beach is the most efficient base on the program: one geographic area, multiple sports, minimal transfer logistics between events.
Tournament Structure & Sessions
The Men’s and Women’s draws run separately but with overlapping schedules across roughly ten days. Pool play features multiple matches per session — all pairs in each group compete across the first phase, with multiple courts active simultaneously in some sessions. Knockout rounds begin once pool play concludes, with single-elimination brackets from the round of 16 through the gold medal match.
LA 2028 Beach Volleyball Venue: Long Beach
Beach volleyball at LA 2028 is held in Long Beach in a temporary outdoor arena built specifically for the Games. Unlike permanent indoor venues, the beach volleyball arena is designed from the ground up for this specific event format — the crowd is positioned close to the court, sightlines are unobstructed, and the open-air setting creates an atmosphere that indoor venues cannot replicate for this particular sport. For official venue information see the official LA28 organizing committee, and for competition rules and results see Volleyball World, the sport’s international body.
Long Beach as a Multi-Sport Venue Cluster
Long Beach hosts more sports than any other single area in the LA 2028 program. The LA Aquatics Center hosts swimming, diving, and water polo. The Long Beach Arena hosts boxing. The beach volleyball venue is a separate temporary facility. For groups attending multiple sports in the area, staying in Long Beach means attending different events on different days without changing hotels or managing complex transfer logistics across the city.
Getting to Long Beach
Long Beach is directly south of LAX, approximately 30 minutes by car. For groups flying in from Austin, the transfer from the airport to Long Beach is among the most straightforward event-day transfers in the Games. Long Beach also has its own commercial airport (LGB), which is served by select carriers and may offer a more direct option depending on the group’s departure city.
Beach Volleyball at the Summer Games: History
Beach volleyball entered the Summer Games program at the 1996 Atlanta Games, where both the Men’s and Women’s tournaments were held at a temporary outdoor venue in Atlanta. The sport’s debut was considered a commercial and attendance success, drawing strong crowds and significant television interest.
The United States has been the most successful program in Summer Games beach volleyball history. American pairs have won gold in both the Men’s and Women’s tournaments across multiple Games cycles. The sport’s popularity in the US — rooted in Southern California beach culture — gives the program a specific resonance at a Los Angeles Games.
The 2004 Athens Games produced the sport’s most memorable Summer Games moment to that point: Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings won the first of their three consecutive gold medals in the Women’s tournament, a run of dominance from 2004 through 2012 that is considered the most sustained pair performance in the history of the event.
Recent Summer Games Champions
| Tournament | 2024 Paris | 2020 Tokyo | 2016 Rio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Women’s Gold | Brazil (Ana Patrícia / Duda) | USA (Ross / Klineman) | Brazil (Agatha / Barbara) |
| Women’s Silver | Canada | Australia | Brazil |
| Men’s Gold | Norway (Sørum / Mol) | Norway (Mol / Sørum) | Brazil (Bruno / Evandro) |
| Men’s Silver | Brazil | Russia | Brazil |
Notable Athletes in Summer Games History
Historic Moments
The Eiffel Tower Venue, Paris 2024
The 2024 Paris Games staged beach volleyball at Trocadéro — a temporary arena constructed directly in front of the Eiffel Tower. The venue became one of the most photographed sports settings in recent Games history, with the tower visible behind the court from almost every seat. The setting reinforced beach volleyball’s position as one of the most visually distinctive events in the Summer Games program.
Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings, 2004–2012
The American pairing’s three consecutive gold medals — without losing a single match across Athens 2004, Beijing 2008, and London 2012 — is the most sustained dominance in Summer Games beach volleyball history. Their Beijing gold, won on home sand at the Chaoyang Park Beach Volleyball Ground in front of 12,000 spectators, is generally considered the definitive Summer Games beach volleyball performance. Walsh Jennings competed through the 2020 Tokyo Games, playing across five Summer Games cycles total.
Brazil at Atlanta 1996 and the Program’s Debut
The sport’s debut at Atlanta 1996 produced immediate results for Brazil: Jacqueline Silva and Sandra Pires won the inaugural Women’s gold medal, while the Men’s gold went to Jarbas Motta and Emanuel Rego. Brazil’s dominance in the first edition established the nation as the program’s founding competitive power, a status it has maintained across multiple Games cycles in both draws.
Beach Volleyball’s California Roots
Beach volleyball was invented in Santa Monica, California in the 1920s, making LA 2028 a return of the sport to its place of origin. The transition from informal beach sport to professional competition and eventually the Summer Games program is a specifically California story. The sport grew from Santa Monica and Manhattan Beach through Southern California’s beach culture in the mid-20th century before spreading globally and reaching the Summer Games in 1996.
The FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour, the sport’s professional circuit, regularly hosts events on California beaches — including in Long Beach and Manhattan Beach. The Long Beach venue for LA 2028 puts the Summer Games beach volleyball program in the heart of the sport’s original geography, which gives the 2028 event a specific cultural context that the program has not had since its Atlanta debut.
What to Expect at LA 2028
LA 2028 beach volleyball at a US-hosted Games in Southern California carries a home-soil context unlike almost any other sport on the program. The 2028 Summer Games is the first US-hosted Summer Games since Atlanta 1996 and the first in Los Angeles since 1984.
US Participation
US pairs in both the Men’s and Women’s draws are expected to enter LA 2028 as competitive contenders. The Women’s program has been more consistently dominant — with Walsh Jennings’ three-gold run followed by Ross’s gold at Tokyo 2020 — but both programs have produced medal-level performances in recent Games cycles. Sessions featuring US pairs from the quarterfinals onward will carry the highest domestic crowd energy in the beach volleyball program.
International Competition
Norway’s Men’s program has become the most consistent gold-medal force of the current era, with Sørum and Mol winning consecutive gold medals at Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024. Brazil continues to produce strong Women’s pairs and remains competitive in the Men’s draw. Germany, Latvia, and Australia have produced consistent medal-round performances. The global depth of the program has increased significantly since beach volleyball’s debut in 1996, with teams from non-traditional beach volleyball nations now regularly reaching knockout rounds.
Frequently Asked Questions
Other Sports at LA 2028
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