After SEA V.League hosting, Candon City to bid for AVC Women’s Volleyball Nations Cup

CANDON, ILOCOS SUR — Candon City is slated to bid for the hosting of the 2026 AVC Women’s Volleyball Nations Cup after getting its first taste of international volleyball with the SEA V.League for men underway in the Candon City Arena for the past week.

 

In a press conference with Candon City Mayor Eric Singson and Asian Volleyball Confederation (AVC) and PNVF President Ramon “Tats” Suzara, the latter said that he had offered Candon City the hosting for next year’s regional tournament after seeing the state-of-the-art facilities.

 

“The arena is not for a local event. It’s for an international event. Hindi 'to pang local. It has to be an international event. We have to bring foreign guests, foreign teams here, foreign teams here. I didn’t expect this to be really big,” Suzara said. 

 

“I offered him last night to host the 2026 AVC Women’s Nations Cup next year.”

 

Suzara added that it will be a joint bid between Candon and Vigan, with the former hosting the final phase.

 

“[The PNVF] will send the official letter of intent to AVC headquarters without me knowing it. But we are bidding to host the AVC Women’s Nations Cup next year from June 6 to 13. So yun ang date na nakaschedule next year,” he said.

 

With a bigger, better competition coming their way, Mayor Singson said that the city is ready to push for developments both on the infrastructure, and among their people — that is, they also want to be able to keep up with the growing interest in the sport of volleyball.

 

Though acknowledging that there have been challenges so far, after previously hosting games for the PVL, and the PBA, Singson believes that they can get themselves up to par in time for next year’s hosting if they net the rights.

 

“Pa-north na ang volleyball. With this, we have to improve our work so that we really deserve to host this kind of ball game. Hosting an international competition is really a challenging one, but we’ll take our swing to any kind of challenge—we will try our best and bring the best of it into the ball game,” he said.

 

As far as Suzara is concerned, the AVC believes that there is ample time to prepare and do the necessary changes for Candon, and Vigan, to be ready to host an event of that magnitude.

 

Especially after the Philippines’ silver medal finish in Vietnam last month, Suzara is eager to put on the same show again in Manila.

 

“We have ample time. There are still of course, some minor improvements to the arena according to the standards of the AVC. Of course, we need to promote that we have many gymnasiums outside of Manila.” he said.

 

Currently, the SEA V.League here is on its penultimate game day with the Philippines preparing to face Cambodia as of press time. Alas Pilipinas is still in the running for the gold medal in the regional tournament.