The relatively newly-formed USA women’s beach handball team have already made a huge impact on the global stage, winning the first-ever edition of the North America and the Caribbean (NAC) Beach Handball Championship, held in Trinidad and Tobago back in July.

Their gold medal not only represented their regional authority but confirmed their ticket to Qatar 2019 with a perfect series of 2-0 victories, including a final win over Mexico.

‘Les Aigles de Carthage’ (The Eagles of Carthage), as the Tunisian women’s beach team are known, qualified through to Qatar 2019 after they won the women’s handball competition at the debut edition of the African Beach Games, held in Cape Verde in June.

They took the first-ever continental title with 2-0 wins over the host nation, Algeria, Kenya and Sierra Leone to book their ticket to Doha.

The Tunisian women have history on the global stage, having appeared in both the 2013 and 2017 World Games and the 2016 edition of the IHF Women’s Beach Handball World Championship.

A year ago, the raw emotion of losing the 5/6 placement match against Denmark at the 2018 IHF Women’s Beach Handball World Championship was clear to see on the faces of the entire Poland delegation in Kazan, Russia, as they had let the chance to book a direct ticket to the first edition of the World Beach Games slip through their hands.

However, due to runners-up Norway not taking up their qualification position at Qatar 2019, Poland were awarded the place as a substitute nation as the next best-placed team in sixth.

The runners-up at the 2019 EHF Women’s European Beach Handball Championship will be one of the favourites for the title in Qatar as they look to use a mixture of youth and experience to grab the inaugural World Beach Games title.

They claimed silver in their continental championship in Poland after losing to Denmark in the final, but with the result, confirmed their participation at Qatar 2019 after Denmark’s fifth place at the 2018 IHF Women’s Beach Handball Championship had already seen them book their ticket to Doha.

As current world champions, Greece know they have a target on their back on the beaches of Qatar as their opponents will be looking to test their skills against the number one team in the world.

That global title came at the 2018 IHF Women’s Beach Handball World Championship, held in Kazan, Russia, in what was a Greek fairy-tale. In their debut appearance on the world stage, they lost their opening match against the defending champions Spain on a shoot-out, but went on to win against Australia, Paraguay, Chinese Taipei and Uruguay, losing only against Poland in the main round.

Spain’s women appear at Qatar 2019 still coming to terms with the sudden death of their 49-year-old coach Diego Carrasco in July and will be full of emotion as they look to make the podium in Doha. 

After two silver medals (in 2011 and 2013) Denmark’s women finally got gold at the Beach EURO, as they defeated Hungary in the final to take the continental title and head coach Morten Frandsen Holmen and his assistant Tina Kirstine Schou Jakobsen will be hoping history can repeat on a global stage soon after silver medals at the 2010 and 2012 World Championships which saw the national team go four straight championships in a row with a silver medal.

A resurgent beach handball programme for P.R. of China has seen the nation step back onto the global stage after a spell in the late 2000s and early 2010s where the team competed at three IHF Women’s World Championships finishing in the bottom three places each time but improving from a 12th and bottom-placed finish in 2008, to 11th in 2010, and then into the top 10 in 2012, finishing ninth.

Marcio Magliano, coach of the Brazilian women’s team, revealed to IHF.info ahead of Qatar 2019 that he expects the competition in Doha to be the “most difficult competition in our history.”

Australia’s women are becoming a mainstay on the international beach handball circuit, having appeared at the last two editions of the World Games (2013, 2017),  the 2017 IHF U17 Beach Handball World Championship and the last four editions of the IHF Beach Handball World Championships – 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2018.

They qualified for Qatar 2019 after defeating American Samoa 2-0 in the final of the 2019 Oceania (OCHF) Beach Handball Championship back in February in Adelaide, Australia – a title they have held since 2012.