We consider a closed surface in R3 evolving by the volume-preserving Willmore flow and prove a lower bound for the existence time of smooth solutions. For spherical initial surfaces with Willmore energy below 8 pi we show long time existence and convergence to a round sphere by performing a suitable blow-up and by proving a constrained Lojasiewicz-Simon inequality.(c) 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.