One of several returning venues on the 2017 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour calendar, Iran’s Kish Island will host the men’s only FIVB Kish Island 3-Star event to be held February 15-18. It will mark the second straight time and year that an FIVB World Tour event will have been held in the Persian Gulf nation.

 

The 2017 FIVB World Tour schedule lists only one other men’s only event scheduled to be a return to Espinho, Portugal (July 27-30).

 

In last year’s inaugural event on Kish Island held in mid-February, Qatar’s Jefferson Santos Pereira/Cherif Younousse won the first gold medal for their country with Russia’s Oleg Stoyanovskiy/Artem Yarzutkin earning silver, Poland’s Piotr Kantor/Bartosz Losiak claiming the bronze medal over their Polish compatriots Michal Kadziola/Jakub Szalankiewicz.

 

Kish Island is a 91.5-square-kilometer (35.3 square miles) resort island in the Persian Gulf. It is part of the Hormozgan Province of Iran. Due to its free trade zone status it is touted as a consumer's paradise, with numerous malls, shopping centers, tourist attractions, and resort hotels. It has an estimated population of 26,000 residents and about 1 million people visit the island annually. Kish Island was ranked among the world’s 10 most beautiful islands by The New York Times in 2010, and is the fourth most visited vacation destination in Southwest Asia after Dubai, the United Arab Emirates and Sharm el-Sheikh.