Fédération Internationale de Hockey

The sport of Hockey is governed internationally by the Fédération Internationale de Hockey (FIH), formerly known by the name Fédération Internationale de Hockey sur Gazon, which was formed on 7 January 1924, in Paris, France, with seven founding members: Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Hungary, Spain, and Switzerland. By then, men’s hockey had already appeared twice at the Olympics, with official tournaments at both London 1908 and Antwerp 1920.

On the other side, the International Federation of Women’s Hockey Associations (IFWHA) was founded in 1927. When women’s hockey was added to the Olympic Programme in 1980, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) demanded that the two federations merge. On 23 April 1983, the IFWHA was dissolved, and women’s hockey became part of the FIH.

As of January 2026, the FIH has 145 member national federations. The organization has its headquarters based in Lausanne, Switzerland, and its current president is Pakistan’s Tayyab Ikram.

The FIH organized the first Hockey World Cup for men in 1971, in Barcelona, Spain. The début of the women’s competition, the Women’s Hockey World Cup, would happen just three years later, in Mandelieu, France (then under the auspices of the IFWHA).

Also well known by its English name, International Hockey Federation, the FIH also governs the non-Olympic disciplines of Indoor Hockey and Hockey 5s. The first FIH Indoor Hockey World Cup was held in 2003 in Leipzig, Germany, for both men and women. The newer format of hockey 5s was introduced at the Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympic Games for the first time, with tournaments for boys and girls, and has been part of the YOG since then. The FIH organized its first Hockey5s World Cup for senior teams (both genders) at Muscat 2024.

The recent discipline of Beach Hockey was originally only overseen by World Beach Hockey, but, on 19-20 October 2023, the Executive Body of the FIH met in Cairo, Egypt, where it officially recognized the organization as part of the FIH ecosystem.

Although hockey has never appeared at the Paralympics, the FIH is an International Paralympic Committee (IPC)-recognized federation.