2025 World Men's Handball Championship

The 2025 IHF World Men's Handball Championship was the 29th such event hosted by the International Handball Federation. It was held in Croatia, Denmark and Norway from 14 January to 2 February 2025. This edition marked the first time the world championship was held in three countries.
Co-host Denmark were the triple defending champions, having won the 2019, 2021 and 2023 editions, and successfully defended their title by defeating co-host Croatia 32–26 in the final. In doing so, Denmark became the first men's national handball team to win four consecutive world titles. France beat Portugal to win the bronze medals, while third co-host Norway finished 10th.
Denmark beat the record for the highest average win margin after 7 matches at a World Championship played with +13.4 goals. They also extended their record of most World Championship matches in a row without defeat to 31.
On 11 October 2018, five nations expressed interest in hosting the tournament.
The deadline elapsed on 25 September 2019. Switzerland became a solo bid, while Croatia took their place in the triple bid. Serbia withdrew their bid, while Hungary filed both an application and deferment for a later tournament. These were the applicants:
Shortly before the vote, Hungary and Switzerland both withdrew, leaving the bid of Croatia, Denmark and Norway unopposed. Croatia, Denmark and Norway were chosen as the hosts on 28 February 2020 at the IHF Council meeting in Cairo, Egypt. This edition marks the first time Norway hosts the World Men's Handball Championship, the second for Croatia, and the third for Denmark.
The bid contained 11 cities: Zagreb, Split, Varaždin, Poreč and Dubrovnik in Croatia; Copenhagen and Herning in Denmark; and Trondheim, Stavanger, Drammen and Bærum in Norway; with the opening match and final taking place in Bærum.
On 25 January 2024, Denmark announced that the Jyske Bank Boxen would be their only venue for the competition. Then, two days later, Norway announced the Telenor Arena would be their only venue for the tournament, after negotiations with Trondheim fell through due to financial reasons.
On 8 April 2024, the IHF announced the venues, with Bærum, Herning, Zagreb, Varaždin and Poreč. being confirmed as hosts cities. The opening game will be in Herning and the final will be in Bærum. During the preparations for the tournament, the Telenor Arena was renamed the Unity Arena for the tournament.
The World Championship hosts were directly qualified, along with the reigning world champions. Since there were three organisers, all from Europe, the number of compulsory places for Europe was reduced by two: 2 instead of default 4. The number of compulsory places awarded to other continental confederation remained unchanged. In regards to the 12 performance spots, and based on the results of the 2023 Men's World Championship, Europe received 11 more spots, while Africa took 1.
The slot allocation was as follows:
Qualifying occurred between February 2023 and June 2024. 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. So far, 76 nations have entered the continental championships and European qualifiers, which act as world championship qualification.
Guinea will make their debut at the championship. Of the returnees Italy made their second appearance ever and first since 1997, Cuba and Kuwait are returning for the first time since the 2009 World Men's Handball Championship, Czech Republic made the championship after ten years, while Austria, Japan and Switzerland qualified after missing out on 2023. The United States made back to back appearances for the first time in 30 years. Netherlands qualified on merit for the first time ever.
Iran, Montenegro, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, South Korea and Uruguay all failed to make this edition after participating in 2023. After making their debut in 2023, Belgium failed to qualify.
After no Oceanian team achieved a top 5 finish in the Asian Championship, two wildcards were given out by the IHF.
As the host country of the 2028 Summer Olympics, the first wildcard was given to United States on 18 October 2018. Regarding the second wildcard, 12 non-classificated nations reportedly applied. On 23 May 2024, it was announced that the second wildcard was gived to Switzerland due to multiple reasons: their sporting merit, their commercial reach, their sporting project and also due to the fact that the proposal made by the Swiss broadcast partner was the most commercially interesting for the IHF. Prior to their selection, Switzerland's coach, Andy Schmid, stated that after their narrow penalty shootout loss to Slovenia, the Swiss' performance merited a wildcard.
The draw took place at 19:30 CET in Zagreb, Croatia on 29 May 2024 at the Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall. Originally scheduled for the 1 June, it was changed a few weeks later to 29 May. The guests for the draw were Croatian goalkeeper Dominik Kuzmanović, head coach of the Croatian national team, Dagur Sigurðsson, Norwegian national team player, Alexander Blonz and former Danish international player, Morten Stig Christensen, who all assisted the draw.
Ahead of the draw, the 32 finalist teams were seeded into four pots according to IHF rankings in May 2024. Although, in regards to the European teams in pots 1 and 2, the 2024 European Championship decided the teams' positions. In addition, five teams were pre-assigned by the three host nations into each of the available vacant groups: Germany in Group A, Austria in Group C, Hungary in Group D, Sweden in Group F and Slovenia in Group G.
The referee pairs were selected on 14 November 2024. The list was updated on 2 January 2025.
The schedule was announced on 8 April 2024.
All times are local (UTC+1).
Results between advancing teams from Group A and Group B were carried over.
Results between advancing teams from Group C and Group D were carried over.
Results between advancing teams from Group E and Group F were carried over.
Results between advancing teams from Group G and Group H were carried over.
Places 1 to 4 and 25 to 32 were decided by play-off or knock-out. The losers of the quarter finals were ranked 5th to 8th according to the places in the main round, points gained and goal difference. Teams finishing third in the main round were ranked 9th to 12th, teams finishing fourth in the main round were ranked 13th to 16th, teams finishing fifth in the main round were ranked 17th to 20th and teams ranked sixth were ranked 21st to 24th. In case of a tie in points gained, the goal difference of the main round was taken into account, then number of goals scored. If teams were still equal, number of points gained in the preliminary round was considered followed by the goal difference and then number of goals scored in the preliminary round.
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Croatian host city, Varaždin signed their hosting contract on 26 June 2024. In November 2024, host city Poreč also signed their contract. In December 2024, Croatian Handball Federation, Varaždin County, Međimurje County and Čakovec signed a joint co-hosting contract.
On 22 October 2024, the official ball was released.
On 22 November 2024, the Norwegian government allotted 10 million NOK for the tournament.
The first phase of ticket sales started on 15 March 2024 in Croatia, while the sales started on 8 April 2024 in Denmark for people who made a federation account. General sales in Denmark commenced on 12 April 2024. Norway started their ticket sales on 12 April 2024.
Another round of sales in Croatia started on 5 June 2024.