LOVB 2027: Ten Teams, Two Conferences — Austin Defends 📈
Ten teams, an East and a West for the first time, and a champion that finished the regular season 10-10 and third.
League One Volleyball returns in January 2027 with ten teams, four of them new, and a real Eastern and Western conference for the first time in its history.
The four expansion cities are Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Minnesota. Miami was the last of them, announced on 21 May, which took the league from six teams to ten in sixteen months.
East is Miami, Atlanta, Madison, Minnesota and Nebraska. West is Austin, Houston, Los Angeles, Salt Lake and San Francisco.
The Bay Area team is the San Francisco Signal, unveiled on 8 July with a brand built by the agency 72andSunny. It is the only one of the ten not named LOVB and then a city.
Sandra Idehen, the LOVB commissioner, in the Miami announcement of 21 May.
"Expanding to Miami marks an exciting next chapter for the league as we continue building a truly national platform for professional volleyball."
Sixteen months is a short time to add four teams and draw two conferences around them. The league had six teams when that clock started and it has ten now, nine of which carry the LOVB initials and a city name.
The 2026 Table Says the Race Was Real
Houston won the regular season at 13-7 and Atlanta finished second at 11-9. Behind them Austin, Salt Lake and Nebraska all finished 10-10, and Madison came last at 6-14.
Three wins separated first place from fifth.
Austin went into the playoffs as the third seed out of that knot and came out of them as champions for a second year running. They beat Atlanta in a golden set in the semifinal, then Salt Lake in the final on 18 April in Long Beach, 3-2 (25-20, 21-25, 22-25, 25-22, 15-11) and then a golden set 15-8.
Madisen Skinner took Finals most valuable player for a second straight season, with 20 kills at .342. Jordan Thompson of Houston was the regular-season most valuable player.
Austin defend in the West alongside Houston, who won the regular season and then did not win the title.
No 2027 schedule has been published and the league has said January and nothing more precise than that. The conferences are already drawn, and they have put the champion and the regular-season winner on the same side of the league.
