2025 World Men's Handball Championship

2025 World Men's Handball Championship

Tournament details
Host countries	Croatia Denmark Norway
Venue(s)	11 (in 11 host cities)
Teams	32 (from 5 confederations)

The 2025 IHF World Men's Handball Championship, will be the 29th event hosted by the International Handball Federation. It will be held in Croatia, Denmark and Norway in January 2025.

Bidding process

Five nations in expressed interest in hosting the tournament. The awarding of the events took place at the IHF Council meeting in Cairo, Egypt on 28 February 2020. Croatia, Denmark and Norway were chosen as the hosts. This will be the second time Croatia will host this tournament, It will also be the third time Denmark will host this tournament, And the first time that Norway will host the tournament.

• Croatia/Norway/Denmark
• Hungary
• Switzerland

Qualification

The World Championship organizers will be directly qualified, along with the reigning world champions. Following decision about increasing number of participating teams, the number of compulsory places awarded to each Continental Confederation is divided as follows: four places each for Asia and Europe and six places for Africa. Since the tournament Pan America is splitted into two zones: the North America and Caribbean Zone, having one compulsory place and the South and Central America Zone having four compulsory places. One additional place is available for Oceania, but only in the case where that national team rank fifth or higher at the Asian Championship. If no Oceania team places among the top five at the Asian Championship, the IHF will award an additional Wild Card. In addition, there will be several performance places for the Continental Confederations, which are based on the teams ranked 1–12 of the preceding World Championship. According to the new qualification system and taking into consideration the results of the 2023 Men’s World Championship, 32 places are distributed as follows:

• Host nation: 3
• Reigning world champion: 1
• Africa: 6
• Asia: 4
• Europe: 11
• Pan America: 5
  • North America and Caribbean: 1
  • South and Central America: 4
• Oceania/additional wild card: 1
• Wild card: 1

Competition	Dates	Host	Vacancies	Qualified
Host nations	28 February 2020	Cairo	3	Croatia Denmark Norway
2023 World Championship	29 January 2023	Poland Sweden	1
2024 European Men's Handball Championship	28 January 2024	Germany	4
2024 African Men's Handball Championship	28 January 2024	Algeria	6
2024 Asian Men's Handball Championship	TBD	TBD	4
2024 South and Central American Men's Handball Championship	TBD	TBD	4
2024 Nor.ca. Men's Handball Championship	TBD	TBD	1
European qualification	TBD	Various	7
Wildcard	28 February 2020	Cairo	1+1[1]	United States

^ 1. If countries from Oceania (Australia or New Zealand) participating in the Asian Championships finish within the top 5, they will qualify for the World Championships. If they finish placed sixth or lower, the place would have been transferred to the wild card spot.

Qualified teams

Country	Qualified as	Qualified on	Previous appearances1
Croatia	Co-Host	28 February 2020	14 (1995, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2021)
Denmark	Co-Host	28 February 2020	24 (1938, 1954, 1958, 1961, 1964, 1967, 1970, 1974, 1978, 1982, 1986, 1993, 1995, 1999, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2021)
Norway	Co-Host	28 February 2020	16 (1958, 1961, 1964, 1967, 1970, 1993, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2017, 2019, 2021)
United States	Wildcard	28 February 2020	6 (1964, 1970, 1974, 1993, 1995, 2001)

¹ Bold indicates champion for that year. Italic indicates host country for that year

Venues

The tournament will take place in 11 cities with five in Croatia, (Zagreb, Split, Varaždin, Poreč and Dubrovnik), two in Denmark (Copenhagen and Herning) and four in Norway (Trondheim, Stavanger, Drammen, and Oslo. The final will take place at the Telenor Arena in Oslo.