2025 World Men's Handball Championship

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 from 14 January to 2 February 2025. This edition marks the first time the world championship is being held in three countries.

Denmark are the triple defending world champions, having won the 2019, 2021 and 2023 editions.

Bidding process
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 the Hungarians filed an application. These were the applicants:


 * 🇭🇺 (withdrew)
 * (withdrew)
 * (withdrew)

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 will be the second time Croatia will host the World Men's Handball Championship, the third for Denmark, and the first for Norway.

Venues
The bid contained 11 cities: Zagreb, Split, Varaždin, Poreč and Dubrovnik in Croatia; Copenhagen and Herning in Denmark; and Trondheim, Stavanger, Drammen and Oslo in Norway; with the opening match and final taking place in Oslo.

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 Oslo, Herning, Zagreb, Varaždin and Poreč. being confirmed as hosts cities. The opening game will be in Herning and the final will be in Oslo. During the preparations for the tournament, the Telenor Arena was renamed the Unity Arena for the tournament.

Qualification
The World Championship hosts will be directly qualified, along with the reigning world champions. Since there are three organisers, all from Europe, the number of compulsory places for Europe is reduced by two: 2 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 Men's World Championship, Europe receives 11 more spots, while Africa takes 1.

The slot allocation is as follows:
 * AHF (Asia): 4 slots
 * CAHB (Africa): 5 slots
 * EHF (Europe): 17 slots (including the three co-hosts)
 * NACHC (North America and the Caribbean): 1 slot
 * OCHF (Oceania): 0 slots
 * SCAHC (South and Central America): 3 slots
 * Wildcards: 2 slots

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.

AHF (4)

CAHB (5)

EHF (17+1) NACHC (1+1)
 * (co-host)
 * (co-host)
 * (co-host)
 * (co-host)
 * (co-host)
 * (co-host)
 * (co-host)
 * (co-host)
 * (co-host)
 * (co-host)
 * (co-host)
 * (co-host)
 * WC
 * WC
 * WC
 * WC
 * WC
 * WC

OCHF (0)
 * None qualified

SCAHC (3)



Wildcards
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. Regarding the second wildcard, 12 nations reportedly applied. On 23 May 2024, Switzerland was given the second wildcard by the IHF due to multiple reasons: their sporting merit, their commercial reach, their project and the IHF's TV partner request for the Swiss to be picked. 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.

Draw
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 asisted the draw.

Seeding
Ahead of the draw, the 32 finalist teams were seeded into four pots according to the ranking of the most recent World Championship and IHF rules. 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.

Preliminary round
The schedule was announced on 8 April 2024.

Main round
All points obtained in the preliminary round against teams that advance aswell, are carried over.

Final ranking
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 were taken into account, then number of goals scored. If teams would still be equal, number of points gained in the preliminary round would be considered followed by the goal difference and then number of goals scored in the preliminary round.

Preparations
Croatian host city, Varaždin signed their hosting contract on 26 June 2024.

Tickets
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 commence on 12 April 2024. Norway starts their ticket sales on 12 April 2024.

Another round of sales in Croatia started on 5 June 2024.