18 European teams will begin the qualification pathway towards the 2023 Women’s World Championship and will discover their phase 1 opponents with a draw at the EHF Office in Vienna on Wednesday.
The draw will take place at 11:00 CEST and will be streamed live on the Home of Handball YouTube channel.
This round features 18 teams which did not qualify for the Women’s EHF EURO 2022 and will play qualification phase 1 during the event. It will be a straight knockout round with nine home and away ties, with the first leg on 2/3 November and the second leg on 5/6 November 2022.
Notable teams in the draw include Austria and Slovakia, who both competed at the previous World Championship in Spain, and Great Britain, who return to official international competition for the first time since the 2018 Challenge Trophy.
Nine winners of phase 1 will progress to phase 2, alongside 10 teams from EHF EURO 2022 and Czech Republic, where 10 tickets to the World Championship are up for grabs.
The pairings will be made with teams from pot 1 facing teams from pot 2. The seeding is as follows:
Pot 1
Austria, Slovakia, Iceland, Türkiye, Ukraine, Faroe Islands, Portugal, Greece, Italy
Pot 2
Kosovo, Israel, Finland, Luxembourg, Azerbaijan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Great Britain, Latvia
