10th Women's 16 European Open set for throw-off

Following an early period of dominance from Denmark and Norway, during which the two nations won two European Open trophies apiece, five different countries have claimed the title: Russia, Sweden, Hungary, Spain and Switzerland, in that order. Beginning as a tournament for U18 teams, the age group changed ahead of the 2018 edition, where Hungary took the trophy.

The competition is the first international glimpse of handball’s biggest rising talents, marking players’ first forays into official Youth Age Category competitions. From here, they will go on to the YAC EHF EUROs, EHF Championships and World Championships, all hoping to follow the path forged by others before them and make it all the way to the open-age national teams.

The precedents are clearly set. One of the just two players to have been named in the EHF Excellence Awards Team of the Season every year, Henny Reistad, took bronze at the W18 European Open with Norway in 2016, narrowly defeating a Netherlands side that included Dione Housheer, the two-time back-to-back Right Back of the Season.

In 2018, Petra Vamos was part of the Hungary team that beat France by one goal in an overtime final, defeating the MVP of the Raiffeisen Bank EHF FINAL4 2026, Sarah Bouktit. The two recently won the EHF Champions League together, playing for Metz — and making history for France as the first club from the nation to win the top-tier club competition.

No doubt the European Open is a chance to see the exciting prospects for the future in action — and with all matches streamed live on EHFTV, handball fans can follow from the first whistle to the last. 

The European Open format features a preliminary round, with four groups of five teams each. After two action-packed days (29 and 30 June) of round-robin games to determine the two top-ranked teams in each group, those two leading sides progress to the quarter-finals, while the lower-ranked squads continue with placement games. The quarter-finals will be played on 1 July.

The teams knocked out in the quarter-finals will also play a series of cross-matches to decide rankings five to eight, while the winners of the quarter-finals proceed to the semi-finals on 2 July. The final and bronze-medal match will take place on Friday 3 July, as will all the last placement games.

The defending title holders Switzerland start from group D, where they will meet the side they faced in the 2024 final, Germany, albeit different generations of the two national teams. Norway, Portugal and Türkiye complete group D.

Hungary, the bronze-medal winners from 2024, play from group A. There they will meet Croatia, Czechia, Iceland and Lithuania.

Group B features Spain, the Netherlands, Serbia, the Faroe Islands and Georgia, while group C is comprised of France — the fourth-place finishers in 2024 — as well as home side Sweden, Romania, Slovakia and Finland. 

Find all information on the W16 European Open here and watch all games live on EHFTV.