The rulebook referees use today is the Official Volleyball Rules 2025-2028, commissioned by the 39th FIVB World Congress in 2024. Some of what's in it is much older than the document itself — the current scoring system is over 25 years old, and a handful of basic rules haven't changed since the sport's first decades. Below is how the mechanics actually work — how a point gets scored, who's allowed to do what on court, and why the player in the different-coloured shirt doesn't follow the same rules as everyone else.
Every rally scores a point, not just the ones on your own serve
In volleyball, the team that wins a rally scores a point — and if it was receiving serve, it also wins the right to serve, with its players rotating one position clockwise. This is the rally-point system, and it has only existed since 1998; before that, a team could only add to its score while serving, and winning the serve back from the opponent without scoring was called a side-out. The change is more than terminology — it's why modern matches run shorter and more predictably than they did before 1998.
Three touches a side — and a block doesn't count as one
A team gets three touches of the ball on its side of the net before it has to send it back over. The usual pattern is a dig, an underarm pass with the forearms, a set, an overhead pass with the hands, and a spike, the overhead attacking shot — but the rulebook doesn't require that order, only the touch count matters. Blocking an opponent's spike at the net doesn't count as one of the three touches; in beach volleyball a block that rebounds back into your own court does count, but in indoor volleyball it doesn't.
Specialised roles — not every player does the same job
Modern volleyball is a heavily specialised sport: a starting line-up usually includes a setter, two centre blockers, two receiver-hitters and a universal spiker, and only certain players are involved in receiving serve at all. Each role carries its own attacking or defensive job, and substitutions are allowed throughout the game — which is why an amateur team where everyone does everything looks nothing like one built around positions.
The attack comes from nearly 3.65 metres up, and it arrives in a blink
A spike can be hit from up to 60 centimetres above the height of a basketball hoop, roughly 3.65 metres, and it reaches the opponent's side in a fraction of a second. The defending player has to read the angle, decide where to send the ball and control the pass almost instantly — which is why volleyball, despite having no physical contact between opponents, is considered as demanding on reaction time as a contact sport.
Rotation — why nobody stays in the same spot all match
Six players are on court at a time, and they rotate one position clockwise every time their team wins the serve back from the opponent. Only the three players in the front row are allowed to jump and attack or block near the net. Back-row players can still hit the ball over the net, but only if they jump from behind the attack line, also called the three-metre line, which separates the front row from the back — and touching or crossing that line before jumping turns the attack into a fault.
A set is played to 25 — but it can't end level
A match is won by the first team to take three sets out of five. The first four sets are played to 25 points, and the fifth, deciding set to 15 — but every set has to be won by at least two points, with no ceiling, so a 24-24 score just keeps going until someone pulls two points clear. That's a relatively recent change: sets used to be played to 15 points across the board, with the first four capped at 17 and the deciding set still needing a two-point margin.
The libero, the player who isn't allowed to serve or attack
In 1998, the FIVB introduced a defence-only specialist role, the libero. They wear a shirt in a different colour from the rest of the team and can substitute in for any teammate, but only in the back row. The libero can't serve, spike the ball over the net, or rotate into a front-row position, but they take on most of the serve-reception and back-row defensive work. At least one rally has to be played between the libero coming off the court and going back on — which is why you'll never see them play an entire match, however good they are.
From Mintonette to today's rulebook
Volleyball was invented in 1895 by William G. Morgan, an American who was working as the physical education director at the YMCA in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and who originally called the game Mintonette. He set the first net at around 1.98 metres, just above the head of an average man, in his own words. The name Volleyball only arrived a year later, at a demonstration match in Springfield, when Professor Alfred T. Halstead pointed out that the ball was constantly being volleyed back and forth over the net and suggested the new name. The first ball, commissioned from A.G. Spalding & Bros., had a circumference of between 63.5 and 68.6 centimetres and weighed between 252 and 336 grams — a wide range by today's standards, before the dimensions were standardised later on. A few of today's basic rules also date to that early period — the six-player roster was fixed in 1918, and the three-touch limit covered above only became a rule in 1922.
The full rulebook runs to dozens of pages and covers plenty of edge cases too — a ball touching the antenna, an injured player who can't be substituted in time, video challenges. For anyone watching a match or stepping onto a court for the first time, the mechanics above are what actually matter. Sporta MD currently covers football, basketball, volleyball and tennis — enough to find who to play with and where in the city.