International Handball Federation

Handball was first included in the Olympic Programme at the Berlin 1936 Games, in a field handball format. At that time, the sport was governed by the International Amateur Handball Federation (IAHF), which had been founded in 1928. The first Men’s World Indoor Handball Championship was held in 1938, also in Berlin, but the federation would hold the last IAHF Congress in that same year.

The IAHF successor, the International Handball Federation (IHF), was founded on 11 July 1946, in København, Denmark. Handball returned to the Olympics, still in the field handball variant, at Helsinki 1952, but only as a demonstration sport. Its return with full-Olympic status would only occur at München 1972, now in an indoor handball format.

The first IHF Women’s Handball World Championship was staged in 1957, in former Yugoslavia. Like on the men’s side, women handball players would have to wait a few years for Olympic inclusion, which would only happen at Montreal 1976.

Handball would later also appear at the inaugural edition of the Youth Summer Olympics, at Singapore 2010, with tournaments for boys and girls.

The discipline of beach handball is also governed by the IHF. The first IHF Beach Handball World Championships were staged in 2004, in El Gouna, Egypt, with men and women tournaments. On the third edition of the Youth Summer Olympics, at Buenos Aires 2018, the handball tournaments were replaced by beach handball competitions.

An International Paralympic Committee (IPC)-recognized federation, the IHF also oversees competitions in the non-Olympic discipline of wheelchair handball, with the first IHF Wheelchair Handball World Championship held in Leiria, Portugal, in 2022.

The federation has 211 affiliated national federations as of January 2026. Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, IHF’s current president is Egypt’s Hassan Moustafa.