AUSTRIA
The 2026 season of Austria’s win2day Beach Volleyball Tour PRO served off last week with its first stop of the year, held in Neusiedl am See. The mixed Slovenian-Czech wild card pairing of Tjasa Kotnik & Andrea Lorenzova brought home the first gold of the season. In the women’s final, the third-seeded team achieved a 2-0 (21-13, 21-14) victory over Anna Katharina Mayr & Franziska Friedl. Another international combo – top seeded Tajda Lovsin of Slovenia & Lilla Villam of Hungary – mastered a 2-0 (21-9, 21-13) sweep of the bronze medal game against Katharina Mascherbauer & Sofija Saric.
Switzerland’s Adrian Heidrich & Yves Haussener claimed the first men’s gold. In the final showdown, they came back from a set down against third-seeded Paul Pascariuc & Alexander Horst to celebrate a narrow 2-1 (15-21, 21-17, 17-15) victory. Poland’s Piotr Kantor & Filip Lejawa took the bronze after a hard-fought 2-0 (28-26, 21-15) win over qualifiers Lukas Thurner & Niels Antoni.
SPAIN
The Spanish National Beach Volleyball Circuit held its first homologated event (pictured in the main photo; source: esvoley.es) of 2026 in Madrid two weeks before the same venue welcomes the first European Futures stop on the 2026 Beach Pro Tour. The mixed Venezuelan-Spanish duo of Hernan Tovar & Isaac Levinson topped the men’s podium. They won the final match by 2-0 (22-20, 21-0) after their opponents – bracket leaders Pablo Perez & Nathan Matos – withdrew from the match between the two sets. The bronze went to third-seeded Daniel Moreno & Oscar Jimenez, who took a 2-0 (21-17, 23-21) victory over Greek qualifiers Stavros Ntallas & Dimitrios Chatzinikolaou in the third-place playoff.
Second-seeded Daniela Andreu & Elba Paez triumphed in the women’s competition. In the gold medal showdown, they battled it out for a tough 2-1 (22-20, 22-24, 15-11) victory over the Hungarian-Russian pairing of Eszter Nagy & Elena Sviridova. The top-seeded French-Spanish duo of Deborah Giaoui & Nazaret Florian settled for bronze after a 2-0 (21-17, 21-11) sweep of the third-place match against Caliope Garcia & Clara Soler.
