20 teams, 10 tickets: Play-offs draw to complete road to Spain
Just a few hours after the completion of the first qualification phase of the Women's World Championship 2021 the EHF Office in Vienna will host a draw event which will determine the last hurdle for 20 teams.
The draw for the play-offs will take place on Monday 22 March at 15:00 CET at the EHF office in Vienna. The draw procedure can be downloaded here.
The draw will be streamed live on the Home of Handball Facebook page and the Home of Handball YouTube channel.
Six European teams have already booked their ticket to Spain for the Women’s IHF World Championship 2021 on 1-19 December.
Host nation Spain and defending champions Netherlands as well as the four best-ranked teams from the Women’s EHF EURO 2020 - Norway, France, Croatia and Denmark - have been guaranteed of a starting berth.
But the World Championship has place for 10 more teams from the European continent.
Those spots will be allocated through 10 play-off ties, with the first leg scheduled for 16/17 April and the second leg for 20/21 April.
Two pots with 10 teams each
So, which 20 teams will be involved in the play-offs?
Pot 1 includes the 10 best-ranked teams from the EHF EURO 2020 which have not qualified directly for the World Championship.
Those teams are: Russia, Germany, Montenegro, Hungary, Sweden, Romania, Serbia, Poland, Czech Republic and Slovenia.
Pot 2 includes 10 qualified teams from the qualification phase 1: Slovakia, Ukraine, North Macedonia, Iceland, Portugal, Turkey, Austria, Italy, Switzerland and Belarus. Read more about the first qualification phase, which just concluded last weekend, here.
Each team from pot 1 will be drawn against an opponent from pot 2; the team drawn first has home right in the first leg.
The 10 winners of the play-offs join the six already qualified European teams at the world championship, where a total of 32 nations will be at the start.
