After a 10-year absence, Greece are back in the World League and can boast a best result of joint-fifth back in 2004. Now 56th in the FIVB rankings, coach Sotiris Drikos's team are the second-lowest ranked side in the tournament but will take some confidence from home advantage when week two of their Group 3 Pool G fixtures is played in Thessaloniki towards the end of June. They have missed the last two editions of the World Championship, although they competed in the previous four, finishing sixth on home soil in 1994 and seventh in 2002. They were runners-up in last year's European League, losing to Montenegro in the gold medal match.
The Greece team have featured at one Olympic Games, the 2004 edition in Athens, where they finished joint-fifth. In their last appearance at the European Championship in 2009 they ended in eighth place. The team formed in 1952 but their first official match was not played until 1967 when they lost to Turkey in the Mediterranean Games. In 1986 they qualified for the World Championship for the first time and took 13th place in Paris. A memorable year for the team was 1987 when they won bronze at the European Championship, their biggest success to date.