2026 Sichuan City Volleyball League starts

China News Service, October 31. The 2026 Sichuan Urban Volleyball League (the 17th National Fitness Volleyball Open) hosted by the Sichuan Provincial Sports Bureau, Sichuan Sports Federation, and Ziyang Municipal People's Government kicked off in Ziyang on the 31st.

According to reports, the most significant change in this league is that the main participants have moved from "city" to "county". The air volleyball project uses counties (cities, districts) as the basic participating units. Each city (state) can choose to send 1 to 3 county teams. Each high-tech industrial development zone and economic and technological development zone in the province can also form separate teams.

Many famous Sichuan volleyball players appeared at the opening ceremony. In the interactive session, Zhu Ling and Zhou Jian'an communicated face-to-face with members of the Ziyang Middle School volleyball team and sent heartwarming messages; Zhang Xiaoya, Zhang Xiang, Wang Chen, and Deng Gang formed a team with local volleyball enthusiasts to compete together.

On the same day, the opening match of the air volleyball event started. The two teams were the Ziliujing District team of Zigong City and the Anyue County team of Ziyang City. The two teams competed for every point. The exciting offensive and defensive rounds attracted bursts of applause from time to time, and the atmosphere continued to heat up. According to the schedule, from October 31st to November 1st, the preliminaries of the men's and women's groups of the air volleyball project will start simultaneously. 42 county (city, district) teams will take the lead in competing for qualifications for the placement competition. The mixed group placement competition for the air volleyball event will be held in Chengdu in mid-November, and the league will last until early December.

The fierce volleyball battle is in full swing inside the stadium, and the "Sports+" scenes outside the stadium are simultaneously unfolding. The Ziyang Division has launched an air volleyball carnival around the stadium, with interactive projects such as serving challenges, continuous padding challenges, parent-child air volleyball relays, and mass fun challenges. Participants can accumulate points with "activity passports" and exchange them for event souvenirs, sports equipment, and merchant coupons.

At the same time, the event market gathers more than 30 merchants including specialty catering, Sichuan specialty products, sporting goods, cultural tourism services, etc. to issue electronic event coupons and launch event consumption maps. The competition area has linked up with surrounding business districts to set up interaction points and special discount areas for spectators to guide participants and spectators to consume nearby after the competition, transforming event traffic into regional consumption increments.