On 11th of January, it is time again for the 25th Men’s Handball Championship, hosted by the International Handball Federation, shortly IHF.
This year France is the host nation. In 8 different cities 24 teams will be competing for the title World Champion 2017. The final is then on 29th of January in Paris.
France has to defend its title because France was the winner of the World Men’s Handball Championship 2015 in Qatar, and it is a rule that the winner of the previous competition is automatically qualified for the next competition.
However France is also host nation and as a consequence was also automatically qualified. The IHF decided to allow Qatar,2nd in the World Championship 2015, to be also automatically qualified for this competition.
Until 21 June 2016 the world teams fought to enter this competition. These nations are qualified for this competition in France.
| France | Host nation |
| Qatar | 2015 World Championship |
| Bahrain | 2016 Asian Men’s Handball Championship |
| Japan | |
| Saudi Arabia | |
| Egypt (1st) | 2016 African Men’s Handball Championship |
| Tunisia (2nd) | |
| Angola ( 3rd) | |
| Germany (1st) | 2016 European Men’s Handball Championship |
| Spain ( 2nd) | |
| Croatia (3rd) | |
| Belarus | European qualification |
| Denmark | |
| Hungary | |
| Iceland | |
| Macedonia | |
| Poland | |
| Russia | |
| Slovenia | |
| Sweden | |
| Brazil (1st) | 2016 Pan American Men’s Handball Championship |
| Chile (2nd) | |
| Argentina (3rd) | |
| Norway | Wildcard |
In the first round of this competition the twenty-four teams are divided into 4 groups with six teams.
| Group A | Group B | Group C | Group D |
| France | Spain | Germany | Qatar |
| Poland | Slovenia | Croatia | Denmark |
| Russia | Macedonia | Belarus | Sweden |
| Brazil | Iceland | Hungary | Egypt |
| Japan | Tunisia | Chile | Bahrain |
| Norway | Angola | Saudi Arabia | Argentina |
In the preliminary round of this competition every team has to play each other to get in the next round. The four best teams of every group qualify and then play in the knockout stage. Here we still have 16 teams competing. The quarter finals with 8 teams start 24th of January, semi finals on 27th/ 28th January .
Then we will know which team will play the final and for the bronze medal.
Every match is 60 minutes and everybody who plays handball or has seen a match knows that handball is a very fast sport and everything can happen.
So let’s look forward to hopefully exciting matches and maybe Macedonia can surprise us….
By Dominik Daniel
VOICES 
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