EHF Beach Handball Champions Cup throws off on Gran Canaria

European beach handball returns to Gran Canaria this week with the fourth edition of the EHF Beach Handball Champions Cup taking place from Thursday, 26 October, to Sunday this week on the Maspaloma beach on the island's southern tip.

Since 2014 the EHF Beach Handball Champions Cup gathers Europe's national beach handball champions and also marks the close to the European beach handball season.

12 men's and 12 women's teams have made their way to the Spanish island. In the men's event, Club BM Playa Ciudad de Malaga aims at defending the title they won in 2016 for the first time.

However, also last year's finalists and the 2014 and 2015 winners, “Ekaterinodar” Krasnodar, have returned and will be eager to take revenge and reclaim the trophy.

Malaga have been seeded in Group A, while Krasnodar are in Group B. The earliest these two beach handball powerhouses could meet are the quarter-finals on Saturday.

While last year's bronze medallists, Orosházi FKSE Hír-Sat from Hungary, are also back in the mix, there is one notable absence: Detono Zagreb, winners of the ebt Finals 2017, have not registered for the 2017 EHF Champions Cup.

Also missing are the 2016 women's champions, Deporte y Empresa Clinicas Rincon. And while the 2016 edition saw two Spanish teams participating, the burden to keep the trophy in Spain this year only lies on the shoulders of C. BM Playa Algeciras.

That turns 2015 winners and last year's finalists Multichem Szentendrei into of the women's event's hottest favourites. The Hungarian side has been seeded in Group A.

A notable new entry are London Great Dane – it is the first time that a British team participates at the EHF Champions Cup. They play in Group B.

Matches start at 9:00 hrs local time on Thursday morning.

Follow the EHF Beach Handball Champions Cup live and on social media.

Over the four days of the tournament, the EHF offers all beach handball fans plenty of opportunities to follow the event.

All matches of Court 1 and Court 2 will be streamed live on ehfTV starting from Saturday, 13:30 hrs when the quarter-finals throw off.

This coverage will be supplemented by a number of highlight and best of-clips from the event which will also be available on Youtube as well as on the beach handball Facebook page.

All matches can be followed with the dedicated beach handball ticker and the respective statistics are available for all men's and all women's teams on the respective event pages.

Furthermore there will be continious updates via Instagram stories on the EHF Beach Handball account and on Snapchat (ehf_live).