After their The World Games title win at Chengdu 2025, Germany’s men’s beach handball team now hold two of the world’s biggest titles in the sport, with the global gold medal added to their continental gold in the European Championship.

They added their second title in as many months after downing Portugal 2-1 (18:21, 19:18, SO 8:6) in the final game of the beach handball competitions at Chengdu 2025 on the shores of Xinglong Lake.

“Unbelievable. I'm empty at the moment, really empty out of energy,” said Germany coach Marten Franke to ihf.info soon after their gold.

“We didn't make our best match and we didn't made our best tournament from a sporting perspective, but it doesn't matter. Mentally, I have no words for this team. They are so strong. Once again, we lost the first set, but then we came back also at the end of it and still believed in it, even though we were 14:6 behind, but then we knew that we could win the second set.

“I really had the feeling when we went on the court, there's some more power in the team for the second set, and they did it quite well. It was very tight, but we were always in front in the set, and then we won. It means unbelievably so much. I don't know really what to say.”

Many people had not predicted them as European Championship winners last year, but now, in a flash, they have two titles in their pocket.

“We can't ask for more, it was such an intense summer. We gave so much intensity already in the European Championship and were unbelievably happy when we won. Then, we came here and said; ‘okay, we want to repeat this success’,” said the former player.

“We left everything on the field. This is a maybe a once-in-a-lifetime win – there are not that many people who win The World Games twice – so we are really happy about this first title and we will never forget this moment.”

The 2026 IHF Men’s Beach Handball World Championship will be held in Croatia next year and if the German men win, they will hold three titles, just like their women’s team did after winning The World Games (2022), World Championship (2022, 2024) and European Championship (2021, 2023) titles in an unprecedented level of success.

So, could it happen?

“I think we are able to do it. But, of course, you can see here in Chengdu we didn't win a single match 2:0, not a single one in six matches. So the top teams in the world are so close together,” he said.

“Of course, we are one of the favourites (for Croatia 2026) – I think that cannot be in any different way – but it's so close, and we have to prepare a lot of things. We have to get better from this year to next to have a chance to win, but we are unbelievably proud about the team and the staff – they all did an incredible job.

“It was an unbelievably good tournament. From a sports perspective we played against the best teams in the world and lost against Brazil and Portugal, but in the decisive matches we were mentally very strong, and we are happy to have gold.”