Women's World Championship Qualification Phase 1

The EHF has announced the playing formats and schedules for the four Phase 1 groups of European qualification to the Women’s World Championship to be played in Serbia from 7 to 22 December 2013.

Phase 1 will be played in four groups: three with four teams and one with three teams. The winner of each group will go through to the play-offs, where they will join 12 of the 14 teams already qualified for the World Championship play-offs. The top two teams ranked at the EHF EURO 2012 will join Serbia as hosts and Norway as reigning champions qualifying directly for the event.

The four groups in Phase 1 will be played as follows:

Group 1 – to be played in tournament format in Partizanske, Slovakia from 30 November to 2 December 2012 between the teams of Slovakia, Finland, Greece and Switzerland.

Group 2 – to be played in tournament format in the Netherlands from 29 November to 2 December 2012 between the teams of Netherlands, Austria, Israel and Slovenia.

Group 3 – to be played home and away between October and December 2012 between the teams of Belarus, Italy, Lithuania and Poland.

Group 4 – to be played home and away between October and December 2012 between the teams of Azerbaijan, Portugal and Turkey.

A complete overview of Phase 1 and match schedule can be found on the eurohandball.com website here.