The paper addresses distributed stabilization of a class of circular formations for steered kinematic particles in three-dimensional Euclidean space. Information exchange between the particles is modeled by a bidirectional graph which is assumed to have a spanning tree. Distributed control design is based on a hierarchical approach that relies on set stabilization and a reduction principle for asymptotic stability of closed sets. The approach allows to solve for different formation specifications in a decoupled manner. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.