MOJI Officially Launches Liga Voli Mahasiswa 2026: 36 Teams Set to Compete Across 3 Cities

On September 25, 2026, digital sports media platform MOJI, part of the Emtek group, officially announced the competition format and the group draw for Liga Voli Mahasiswa 2026, also known as LVM 2026. It is the first time a volleyball competition dedicated exclusively to university students has been organised on a national scale in Indonesia. The event brings together 36 teams from 24 universities, competing in three cities — Yogyakarta, Surabaya and Jakarta — between October 7 and October 31, 2026.

Under the slogan "Campus as a new stage", the organisers position LVM 2026 not as a professional competition but as a launchpad for young talent in Indonesian volleyball. Speaking at the launch event, Banardi Rachmad, MOJI's Deputy Director of Programming, stressed that the competition is designed to bring young university volleyball players onto the national stage. According to Banardi Rachmad, MOJI wants to turn campus volleyball into a content product that can reach a broad audience, rather than remaining confined to individual universities' internal tournaments.

Format: 36 teams, 60 matches across 15 match days

According to the organisers, LVM 2026 is divided equally into a men's and a women's sector, each with 18 teams. The teams are allocated across three host cities. In each city, six men's teams and six women's teams compete; the six teams in each gender are split into two three-team pools and play a single round-robin. The pool results determine the pairings for the subsequent placement matches.

In total, the competition comprises 60 matches, equivalent to 20 matches per city. Each venue hosts five days of play, with around four matches per day. That is a modest match load, suited to student squads that do not have the training and recovery conditions of professional teams. Competitively, the format gives each team only a small number of matches, prioritising exposure and playing experience over testing squad depth.

A notable detail in the schedule is the difference in playing windows between cities. In Yogyakarta and Surabaya, matches are scheduled between 13:00 and 19:00 Western Indonesian Time (WIB). In Jakarta, however, matches are slotted at 11:00, 13:00, 15:00 and 17:00. The difference most likely stems from venue availability, specifically at GOR Pertamina Simprug, rather than from any attempt to optimise broadcast windows.

Three cities, three campus volleyball hubs

Yogyakarta was chosen as the opening venue. It is one of Indonesia's cities with the highest student density and one of the country's strongest campus volleyball centres. Matches in Yogyakarta take place at GOR UII. Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city and home to Universitas Negeri Surabaya (UNESA), one of the country's leading sports education institutions, hosts the second series at GOR Unesa. Jakarta, the country's economic and media centre, closes the city series at GOR Pertamina Simprug.

Spreading the competition across three cities rather than concentrating it in one location reflects a clear decentralisation strategy. This approach reduces travel costs for participating teams and extends audience reach beyond the Jakarta area. In return, the organisers face the challenge of balancing the strength of pools in different locations, given that no seeding or performance-based ordering information has been released.

24 universities take part

The list of participating institutions spans several regions. Alongside specialised sports education institutions such as Universitas Negeri Surabaya, the competition features a wide range of multidisciplinary universities from Java and surrounding areas. This diversity reflects a substantial breadth in Indonesia's campus volleyball base, while also raising questions about the gap in standards between universities with long sporting traditions and newer entrants.

The organisers have not released any information about seeding, historical rankings or the criteria used to classify the 24 universities. That means the draw was random or geographically based, and the true balance of strength between pools cannot yet be assessed.

A development-oriented prize structure

The total prize pool for LVM 2026 is modest. The champion of each sector receives 10 million rupiah, equivalent to roughly 620 US dollars. The following placings receive 7.5 million, 5 million and 2.5 million rupiah respectively. In total, the organisers distribute 25 million rupiah per sector, around 1,550 US dollars, and about 3,100 US dollars across both the men's and women's sectors.

In Indonesian sporting practice, this money is called "uang pembinaan", meaning a development grant, as distinct from purely commercial prize money. The naming indicates that the organisers define LVM 2026 as a grassroots development competition, where the value lies in playing opportunities and media exposure rather than in material rewards. This is worth keeping in mind when assessing how competitive the event will actually be.

Context: Indonesian volleyball and the continental stage

LVM 2026 arrives as Indonesian volleyball looks to close the gap with Asia's leading nations. At the 2026 Asian Games, Indonesia's women's team finished sixth, recording a 3-0 win over Vietnam along with defeats to Japan and Chinese Taipei. The result reflects Indonesia's standing at the top of Southeast Asia while remaining below the continent's leading volleyball nations such as Japan, Iran, China and South Korea.

Against that backdrop, building a university-level competition system is seen as a structural response aimed at widening the talent supply. It should be acknowledged, however, that the knock-on effect from a student competition to senior national team results is indirect and would take years to verify. Expectations of short-term impact should be kept realistic.

The media-owner model

The fundamental difference between LVM 2026 and other campus competitions lies in its organisational model. MOJI is not merely a media outlet reporting on an existing event; it founded and operates the competition directly. At the same time, streaming platform Vidio, also part of the Emtek ecosystem, handles content distribution. The result is that the entire value chain, from organisation and production to distribution, sits within a single media group.

This vertically integrated model offers a clear advantage in audience reach. A typical student competition struggles to attract a large viewership, but when placed on a popular streaming platform, its reach can expand considerably. This is the core difference between LVM and competitions run by federations or by universities themselves.

From an industry perspective, the event reflects a trend of sports media organisations moving from intermediary roles to content ownership. In Southeast Asian volleyball, the model remains relatively new. If it succeeds, it could set a precedent for other platforms to invest directly in building competitions rather than simply buying rights.

Risks and open questions

The biggest risk facing LVM 2026 is not competitive but structural: sustainability. This is the first season, with no precedent for comparison and no commitment yet regarding a second edition. Many media-branded competitions in the region have folded after one or two seasons when engagement metrics fell short of expectations. If LVM cannot establish an annual rhythm, the goal of building a talent pipeline will be difficult to realise.

A second risk is the gap between messaging and incentives. Describing the event as a national stage for young talent raises high expectations, while the maximum prize is only 10 million rupiah per sector. That mismatch could create a gap between expectation and reality if coverage does not accurately convey the competition's developmental nature.

A third risk concerns operations and governance. The window between the draw on September 25, 2026 and the opening match on October 7, 2026 is just 12 days — a fairly tight runway for preparing a three-city event. In addition, the relationship between the organisers and the Indonesian Volleyball Federation (PBVSI) is not mentioned, and the eligibility rules for student players have not been published.

Outlook

From an industry standpoint, LVM 2026 is a noteworthy experiment. It converts a campus volleyball base that has traditionally been recreational into structured, broadcastable content. Given Indonesia's large population and the popularity of volleyball there, the potential to expand both participation and viewership is plausible.

The real value of the competition, however, will be determined by three factors: whether LVM is staged annually, whether viewership figures are strong enough to prove the media-owner model works, and whether players who competed in LVM go on to professional clubs or the national team in the coming years. Until those answers emerge, LVM 2026 should be viewed for what it is: a grassroots development competition with potential, but as yet unproven.