[2] The rankings were introduced in February 2014 and were originally updated monthly;[4] since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, new issues have been released at irregular intervals.
[6] BSWW believed creating a world ranking would help teams, national associations and fans in understanding the "reality of beach soccer".
[4] The ranking was first presented at the 2nd FIFA Beach Soccer Workshop in Dubai from 22 to 23 November 2013 to representatives of over 100 national associations who debated the composition of its materialisation.
The following table shows exactly how many points a team will earn per their final position at each type of event: b) Continental championships also act as qualification tournaments to the World Cup (WC).
When the rankings debuted in February 2014, Russia were the inaugural leaders, having amassing over 5000 points[4] thanks to winning the 2011 and 2013 World Cup and Euro Beach Soccer League (EBSL) titles.
Portugal regained the World Cup title in December 2019, cutting Brazil's lead to a mere 240 points, but nevertheless the South American's clung on to the number 1 spot in the immediate aftermath of the tournament.
[11] Their near three-year stay at the top of the ranking finally ended with the release of the March 2020 listings, with world champions Portugal replacing them at the peak by a slender 21 points,[12] becoming the first team to spend a second spell as number 1.
[13] Russia then began their second spell as ranking leaders after a five year gap, in August 2021, immediately after claiming the 2021 World Cup.
[14] By January 2022, they had spent enough time at the summit during this spell to regain the record of team longest ranked the world's best cumulatively.
However, the Russian invasion of Ukraine then occurred in February; as a result, Russia were suspended from participating in BSWW competitions in accordance with sanctions imposed by FIFA and UEFA in response to the conflict.