The draw for the Beach Handball competitions of the Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games will take place at the International Handball Federation (IHF) headquarters in Basel, Switzerland on Wednesday 22 July at 11:00hrs (CET).

The draw event will be streamed live on the IHF YouTube channel.

IHF office member responsible for Beach Handball, Hristo Boskoski, will conduct the draw with IHF competition director Patric Strub.

16 teams are set to appear in the Beach Handball competitions at Dakar 2026 – eight in the men’s competition and eight in the women’s competition:

Women’s competition
Croatia (CRO), France (FRA), Kenya (KEN), Mexico (MEX), People’s Republic of China (CHN), Senegal (SEN), Spain (ESP), Uruguay (URU)

Men’s competition
Brazil (BRA), Cook Islands (COK), Germany (GER), Hungary (HUN), Puerto Rico (PUR), Senegal (SEN), Thailand (THA), Tunisia (TUN)

Beach Handball at Dakar 2026 will take place across five matchdays, from Monday 9 to Friday 13 November at the 'Saly Beach West' venue, a popular seaside and tourist resort based in the Thiès Region on the ‘Petite Côte’ of Senegal, south of the capital, Dakar.

The Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games will run from 31 October to 13 November in Senegal, and marks the second time that Beach Handball will be part of the Olympic Games, following its debut at the 2018 Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Draw procedure and pots

Teams have been seeded based on their results at the 2025 IHF Men’s and Women’s Youth (U17) Beach Handball World Championships. As host nation, Senegal has the right to choose which preliminary groups they will compete in.

For both the men’s and women’s competition draws, the pots will be drawn in the following order:

Pot 1,
Pot 2,
Pot 3,
Pot 4, (decision of the Senegalese Handball Federation)
 

Men’s competition
Pot 1: GER, BRA
Pot 2: HUN, TUN
Pot 3: THA, PUR
Pot 4: SEN, COK

Women’s competition
Pot 1: ESP, URU
Pot 2: FRA, CRO
Pot 3: CHN, KEN
Pot 4: SEN, MEX

 

Beach Handball at the Youth Olympic Games

The 2026 Youth Olympic Games (YOG) will be held in Dakar, Senegal from 31 October to 13 November 2026. It will feature 25 sports in the official competition programme, with 10 additional disciplines across 151 events, all with full gender balance: 72 events for women, 72 for men, and 7
mixed events.

Qualification for the Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games was based on a set of principles agreed by the Executive Board of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), plus a precondition for teams to participate at the 2025 IHF Men's and Women's Youth (U17) Beach Handball World Championships, which took place in Hammamet, Tunisia in 2025.

National Olympic Committees (NOC’s) have to select their athletes (‘Sport Entries’) by September 2026.

Spain’s IHF Women’s Beach Handball World Championship winner, María Asunción Batista Portero – known in the handball world as Asun Batista – was announced as an ‘Athlete Role Model’ (ARM) for Dakar 2026 back in April.

Dakar 2026 will be the fourth edition of the YOG, following its debut in Singapore (2010), the second edition in Nanjing, China (2014) and 2018 edition, in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Indoor/7-a-side handball featured at the 2010 and 2014 editions, before being replaced by Beach Handball at the 2018 edition, the debut event won by Argentina (women) and Spain (men).

The YOG is a major event which embodies the Olympic spirit, sporting excellence and the promotion of youth. The event has become a pillar of the Olympic Movement and is more than just sporting competitions. The YOG are part of an educational and cultural programme aimed at instilling the Olympic values of respect, friendship and excellence in young people around the world.

The election of Dakar as the host city of the YOG 2026 marks a historic moment for Africa. The decision was taken at the 133rd IOC Session in October 2018, making Dakar the first African city to host the YOG.

Initially planned for 2022, Dakar was postponed to 2026 due to the Covid-19 pandemic which has allowed for better planning of the event and ensured its success.