2025 World Women's Handball Championship

The 2025 IHF World Women's Handball Championship will be 27th edition of the championship to be jointly hosted by Germany and the Netherlands under the aegis of International Handball Federation (IHF) from 26 November to 14 December 2025. It will be fourth time in history that the championship is jointly hosted. "Catch the Dream" will be the official motto of the competition.
France are the defending world champions, having won the 2023 edition.
On 11 October 2018, the IHF announced the bidders for the championship.
However, for unknown reasons, both bids quietly withdrew. On 25 September 2019, the next bids were as follows:
On 28 February 2020, the tournament was awarded to Germany and Netherlands unopposed at its meeting held in Cairo, Egypt.
On 16 May 2022, the German Handball Association (DHB) presented the German venues:
On 5 April 2023 the Netherlands Handball Association presented the Dutch venues:
The World Championship hosts will be directly qualified, along with the reigning world champions. Since there are two organisers, all from Europe, the number of compulsory places for Europe is reduced by one: 3 instead of default 4. The number of compulsory places awarded to other continental confederation remains unchanged. In regards to the 12 performance spots, and based on the results of the 2023 Women's World Championship, Europe receives 11 more spots, while South and Central America takes 1.
The slot allocation is as follows:
Qualifying occurred between October 2024 and TBD 2025. Each region's continental championships acted as world championship qualification, although Europe also has its own qualification process. With the exception of Belarus and Russia, who are banned of the IHF due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, all remaining IHF member associations were eligible to enter qualification.
Egypt will make their debut at the championship. Of the returnees, after receiving a wildcard, United States are back for the first time in thirty years, while Uruguay return for the first time since 2011. Tunisia, return after missing out on 2023. Senegal qualified for two consecutive finals for the first time. Originally, China failed to qualify after finishing outside the top four at the Asian Championship, however, they were belatedly given a wildcard, continuing run of making every world championship since 1986.
Notable absentees include Congo and Paraguay both failed to qualify having participated at the previous two championships.
After no Oceanian team achieved a top 5 finish in the Asian Championship, two wildcards were given out by the IHF.
United States was given the first wildcard on 18 October 2018, in order to prepare them for the 2028 Summer Olympics which they are hosting. On 31 March 2025, China was given the second wildcard due to their performances at the recent age group world championships and their position as a big market in Asia.
The schedule was announced on 21 November 2024.
All points obtained in the preliminary round against teams that advance as well are carried over.
Places 1 to 4 and 25 to 32 will be decided by play-off or knock-out. The losers of the quarter finals will be ranked 5th to 8th according to the places in the main round, points gained and goal difference. Teams finishing third in the main round will be ranked 9th to 12th, teams finishing fourth in the main round 13th to 16th, teams finishing fifth in the main round 17th to 20th and teams ranked sixth 21st to 24th. In case of a tie in points gained, the goal difference of the main round will be taken into account, then number of goals scored. If teams will still be equal, number of points gained in the preliminary round will be considered followed by the goal difference and then number of goals scored in the preliminary round.