1. Cuba was the 1983 NORCECA Championship runners-up (champions United States, were already qualified as hosts), but together with East Germany (1983 European champion), Soviet Union (1980 Olympic champion) and other countries,boycotted the games.
2. Canada, South Korea and West Germany replaced Cuba, East Germany and the Soviet Union.
3. In a change in the classification process, the best team in the FIVB ranking that had not qualified for the Games would gain a spot in the tournament. In this way, the remaining place went to South Korea; however, with the boycott there was another place left and it was reassigned to the second best non-qualifier, which was Brazil.
The tournament was played in two different stages. In thePreliminary round (first stage), the eight participants were divided into two pools of four teams. Asingle round-robin format was played within each pool to determine the teams position in the pool. TheFinal round (second stage) was played in asingle elimination format, where the preliminary round two highest ranked teams in each group advanced to the semifinals and the two lowest ranked teams advanced to the 5th–8th place semifinals.
Athens
United States
Moscow
Lima
China
Cuba
São Paulo
Rostock
Fukuoka
South Korea*
Canada
West Germany
Brazil_pictogram.svg)
