Rally duration

The bars use one scale, from 0 to 8, so duration in seconds and actions per rally can be read together. Women and men stay in their own cards.

For the women, mean duration is 6.76 s in 2025 and 6.12 s in 2026, while mean actions are 6.59 and 6.80. For the men, duration is 5.06 s and 5.08 s, and actions are 5.41 and 5.45. The spread from match to match is wider than the gap between the two years.

Each competition is the final eight only. The European Championship 2026 is included here. It has no 2025 pair on the Overview.

Duration is the last skill video_time minus the serve video_time. Rows with no skill are left out. All 8,195 rallies are included.

In the men’s European Championship, the bronze match Slovenia–Finland has weaker timing. The correlation of duration with touch count for that whole competition is 0.78. The other five competitions are above 0.92.

Six competitions

A serve error lasts 0 seconds, because the only skill in that rally is the serve. A highlighted row is a match whose correlation stays below 0.90.

Matches

Share of duration bins, percent of rallies

Actions per rally

The same rallies. Short is 1–4 actions, medium is 5–8, long is 9 or more. The median is 5 in every group.

Sample

The figures come from 48 Data Volley match files and 8,195 rallies. There are six groups of eight matches: the women’s and men’s Volleyball Nations League final eights in 2025 and 2026, and the women’s and men’s European Championship final eights in 2026.

Each group runs from the quarterfinals through the final. The preliminary round is not included. Women and men are kept separate throughout.

Overview and Matches place VNL 2025 beside VNL 2026. The European Championship is on the Duration tab. This set has no European Championship 2025, so that competition is not put in the year columns.

What counts as a rally

One rally is one point. Rows belong to the same rally when they share the match file, the set number, and the point id.

A row counts when its skill is Serve, Reception, Set, Attack, Block, Dig, or Freeball. The rally is kept when those rows contain exactly one serve.

Rows with an empty skill are left out. Those are rotations, the point code, and other non-skill codes.

Actions

The action count is the number of skill rows in the rally. A short rally has 1 to 4 actions, a medium rally has 5 to 8, and a long rally has 9 or more. The median is 5 actions in every group.

Duration

Duration, in seconds, is the last skill video_time minus the serve video_time. The value is the clock stored in that Data Volley file.

A serve error contains only the serve row, so its duration is 0 seconds. An ace is usually about 0 to 1 second. The 0–2 second bin is therefore made up largely of rallies that end on the serve.

The correlation is the Pearson correlation between duration and the action count, calculated inside each competition. Five competitions are above 0.92. The men’s European Championship is 0.78, because the bronze match Slovenia–Finland has a correlation of 0.48. In the men’s VNL 2025, Slovenia–France is 0.76. Those two matches are highlighted on the Duration tab.

How to read the two years

The 2025 list and the 2026 list are two final eights in date order. A row in 2025 is a different match from the row beside it.

For the women, mean duration is 6.76 s in 2025 and 6.12 s in 2026, and mean actions are 6.59 and 6.80. For the men, duration is 5.06 s and 5.08 s, and actions are 5.41 and 5.45. The range across the eight matches is wider than the gap between the two years.

The page reports these recorded values. A difference between the years is not presented here as the effect of a rule change.

The two years sit side by side. A row in 2025 is a different match from the row in 2026. Lists are in date order.