The biggest change is that most qualification groups, including Sweden's, will be decided in January 2021 instead of August / September 2020 which was previously planned.
Another change is that the arrangement with home / away meetings is abolished and replaced with pool games, which compresses the schedule and reduces travel for teams, judges and officials. For Swedish, this means that no European qualifying matches are played at home.
- We were set to play in August / September during the regular national team period, when national leagues normally reside. But with the pandemic, however, nothing is alike and we understand that more adjustments need to be made to get to the qualification, says Martin Kihlström, Confederation Manager at the Swedish Volleyball Association, in a press release.