You know how punters get lost in too much data or bet blindly? I break down the stats and trends so you can feel confident you’re betting with more than just gut instinct.
CEV Champions League
Created in 1959 under the name CEV European Champions Cup, a year prior to the creation of the CEV Women's Champions League, this tournament ran until the end of the 1999-00 season under that name before taking up the new and current name of the CEV Champions League.
The 2026-27 tournament will be the 68th edition of the tournament, a tournament that is the top competition in Europe, where the best European teams compete, it's volleyball's equivalent of the UEFA Champions League.
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CEV Champions League Preview
The reigning champions, Umbria Volley Perugia, will be looking to defend their title in the 68th edition of the tournament. Having won their first-ever title in 2025, they successfully defended that title, beating Warta Zawiercie in the final for the second year running.
The Polish clubs will be mounting an attack, Jastrzębski Węgiel, who lost back-to-back finals in 2023 & 2024 and then finished third in 2025 and already mentioned Warta Zawiercie have now been back-to-back runners-up.
Most Successful CEV Champions League Nations
- Russia (23 Wins / 7 Runners-Up)
- Italy (22 Wins / 18 Runners-Up)
- Romania (6 Wins / 9 Runners-Up)
Since Trentino won three on the bounce between 2009-11, there have been four Italian winners who were Civitanova (2019), Trentino (2024) & Perugia (2025 & 2026), six others have made it to the finals and all six have been beaten, four of those by a Russian club, there have also been four third-place finishes for Italian clubs since too so they are usually thereabouts.
CEV Champions League Past Winners
The success of ZAKSA Kędzierzyn-Koźle in 2021 was only the second time a Polish team had won the tournament, the last coming back in 1978 when Płomień Milowice were successful, and they backed that up with success in both 2022 & 2023. The 2023 final was the first since 2015 not to feature an Italian team; however, since then, all three finals have been won by Italian teams.
| Season | Champions | Score | Runners-Up |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025–26 | Sir Sicoma Monini Perugia | 3–0 | Warta Zawiercie |
| 2024–25 | Sir Sicoma Monini Perugia | 3–2 | Warta Zawiercie |
| 2023–24 | Itas Trentino | 3–0 | Jastrzębski Węgiel |
| 2022–23 | ZAKSA Kędzierzyn-Koźle | 3–2 | Jastrzębski Węgiel |
| 2021–22 | ZAKSA Kędzierzyn-Koźle | 3–0 | Itas Trentino |
| 2020–21 | ZAKSA Kędzierzyn-Koźle | 3–1 | Itas Trentino |
| 2019–20 | No Tournament | ||
| 2018–19 | Cucine Lube Civitanova | 3–1 | Zenit Kazan |
| 2017–18 | Zenit Kazan | 3–2 | Cucine Lube Civitanova |
| 2016–17 | Zenit Kazan | 3–0 | Sir Sicoma Colussi Perugia |
CEV Champions League Betting Tips
The league round of the tournament will feature five groups, each consisting of four teams who will play each other home and away, this means each team will play six games during the group stages, each group consisting of a total of twelve games meaning the group stage of the tournament will have a total of sixty games giving the OLBG volleyball tipsters more than enough chances to share their CEV Champions League predictions. You will find these tips on the main Volleyball Predictions page. Alternatively, if you only want to see tips from those who have shown a profit over the past year on volleyball, then head over to the Best Volleyball Tipsters page.
Five-Year Favourite Statistics
One plain thing to see is the consistency of the favourites over the last five years. Rounded to the nearest whole number, the favourites had a success rate of at least 72% in four of the last five seasons, with the 2025-26 season a bumper year with 85% of favourites winning.
- 2021-22: 47-65 (72.31%)
- 2022-23: 63-78 (80.77%)
- 2023-24: 54-79 (68.35%)
- 2024-25: 63-77 (81.82%)
- 2025-26: 66-78 (84.62%)
- Overall: 293-377 (77.72%)
Five-Year Set Score Statistics
Just under one in four games over the past five seasons have finished with a 3-0 victory for the assigned home team which proves one thing, that is that home-court advantage really does seem to be a big favour, however, a 3-0 win for the away team is the second most featured outcome meaning 45% of the games have finished in either a 3-0 or 0-3 whitewash scoreline.
- 3-0: 101 Games (26.10%)
- 0-3: 74 Games (19.12%)
- 3-1: 57 Games (14.73%)
- 1-3: 52 Games (13.44%)
- 3-2: 50 Games (12.92%)
- 2-3: 44 Games (11.37%)
CEV Champions League Most Wins
The Soviet Union in the early years of the tournament recorded a lot of success, between 1959 and 1991, a total of fifteen winners came from there, thirteen of those championships going the way of CSKA Moscow, which is the most successful team with more than double the number of titles than their nearest rival, Zenit Kazan (6).
| Rank | Club | Champions | Runner-Up |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | CSKA Moscow | 13 | 3 |
| 2nd | Zenit Kazan | 6 | 2 |
| 3rd | Modena Volley | 4 | 4 |
| 4th | Trentino Volley | 4 | 3 |
| 5th | Volley Treviso | 4 | 1 |
Contributor Information
Our volleyball content, including this CEV Champions League Preview, is meticulously crafted by Andy, who maintains the content on this page, keeping you up-to-date with the latest information.
Andy Powell
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