One of the big highlights of the European Handball Federation (EHF) beach handball club calendar gets underway today (Thursday 18 June) with the 2026 edition of the EHF European Beach Handball Tour Finals, known as the ‘ebt Finals 2026’.

Four days of action (18 to 21 June) will see 32 teams – 16 men’s and 16 women’s – compete in Trapani on the island of Sicily, Italy in the event which concludes the previous ebt season, known as the ‘ebt Tour 2024/25’.

It is the first ebt Finals to be played under the amendments to the IHF Rules of the Game for Beach Handball, which came into effect on 1 April 2026

A number of past and present international players, coaches and teams will be participating in Italy, some of whom will be using the event as a final preparation for the upcoming 2026 IHF Men’s and Women’s Beach Handball World Championships in Zagreb, Croatia, which throw-off next Tuesday (23 June).

32 teams is an increase on the 28 who played at the 2025 edition, held at the same venue last year with this 2026 edition the fourth time Italy has hosted the prestigious tournament.
 
Both the men’s and women’s competitions see an initial four initial preliminary groups of four each with the top three moving through to the main round on Friday (19 June) which consists of two groups of six teams each. The top four teams in each main round group then qualify through to the knock-out phase, starting with the quarter-finals, semi-finals and then medal matches. Ranking games will be played throughout.

The last six men’s ebt Finals were won by teams from five different countries: Croatia, Portugal (twice), Hungary, Denmark, and Spain, with 12 nations represented.

Defending champions BHC Zagreb – for many years a de-facto Croatia national team but this time missing Croatia captain Ivan Juric and key player Lucian Bura – have won seven of the 15 ebt Finals (since 2010) to date, finally returning to the top of the podium in 2025 after a hiatus since 2017.

Notably, the ‘Blue Team’ from Italy are the men’s national team, using the event as their final preparation for Croatia 2026, where they will make their world championship debut. The team has also participated in two previous ebt stages on the 2025/26 tour.

Blue Team hope to spring a surprise at their home event, as their core consists of Italian national team 

The women’s event has seen the past six winners come from either Spain (four) or Denmark (two) and will feature 13 different nations on the sand in Italy.

Last year's winners Team Almeira, who have changed their name to CATS Playas de Fuengirola, have included four members from their golden 2025 team but are missing Spain’s influential Asun Batista, the two-time MVP at the EHF Excellence Awards.

As usual, fans can help select players for the ebt Finals 2026 All-star Team, with a vote on beach.eurohandball.com going live on Saturday (20 June).

All games from the three courts in Italy will be shown live on the paid subscription service ehfTV.com. 

The match schedule can be found here:

A total of eight pairs of referees — including four pairs of referee candidates — and 10 delegates have been named to officiate at the tournament, including:

Referees:
Ivan Curcic / Zeljko Ivanovic (Montenegro)
Corentin Loyer / Matis Verdier (France)
Volodymyr Filonenko / Anna Shcherbyna (Ukraine)
Rebeka Hascikova / Stanislava Kellner (Slovakia)
Michal Jakubek / Mikolaj Marcinkowski (Poland) — candidates
Adrian Georgescu / Simion-Bogdan Isdraila (Romania) — candidates
João Garcia / João Vinagre (Portugal) — candidates
Serena Gattel / Asja Novesi (Italy) — candidates

Delegates:
Marco Trespidi (Italy)
Diogo Gomes (Great Britain)
Maria Aranyosi (Hungary)
Olga Laiuk (Ukraine)
Kristina Kvedariene (Lithuania)
Levan Gelashvili (Georgia)
Jiri Opava (Czechia)
Petros Theodosiou (Greece)
Lazar Miskov (Serbia)
Diana Kurcinova (Slovakia)

Photo credit: EHF / Joe Pappalardo