2023 World Men's Handball Championship


The 2023 IHF World Men's Handball Championship, will be the 28th event hosted by the International Handball Federation. It will be held in Poland and Sweden from 12 to 29 January 2023.

Bidding process

Eight nations initially expressed interest in hosting the tournament:
However until the bidding phase expired on 15 April 2015 only three nations entered documents to bid for this event. On 21 April 2015 it was announced that Poland and Sweden have agreed intentions to jointly hosting this tournament:
A decision was scheduled for 4 June 2015, but the Congress was moved to 6 November 2015. Poland and Sweden were chosen as the hosts. This is going to be the first time for Poland to participate as the host country at IHF World Men's Handball Championship

Venues

The tournament is expecting to take place in 8 cities : Gdańsk, Łódź, Katowice, Gliwice, Kraków, Stockholm, Malmö and Gothenburg. The opening and final will take place in Stockholm.

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.
Starting in 2021 Pan America was split 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 2021 Men’s World Championship, 32 places are distributed as follows:
CompetitionDatesHostVacanciesQualified
Host nations6 November 2015 Sochi2
2021 World Championship31 January 20211
2022 European Men's Handball Championship14-30 January 2022
4
2022 African Men's Handball Championship20-30 January 20226
2022 Asian Men's Handball ChampionshipTBD Dubai4
2022 South and Central American Men's Handball ChampionshipTBD Santiago4
2022 Nor.ca. Men's Handball ChampionshipTBD Toronto1
European qualificationTBDVarious9
Wild CardTBD—1+1

Qualified teams