A second, successive IHF Men’s Youth Beach Handball World Championship appearance for Uruguay represents success for the South American nation which has found itself in the shadow of continental heavyweights Argentina and Brazil over the years.

The host nation fans will be hoping their ‘Les Aigles de Carthage’ (The Eagles of Carthage) national team can pull off a shock on the sand in Hammamet and make it all the way through to the knockout stages.

Thanks to the lottery of a good draw, as hosts, Tunisia were able to choose which preliminary group they wanted to be in and there was only one choice to be made with group C including debutants Mexico and the Cook Islands, plus second-timers Thailand – the easiest, on paper at least.

Thailand’s men enter their 2025 IHF Men’s Youth Beach Handball World Championship preliminary group as the most experienced nation.

Alongside Mexico, Cook Islands and host nation Tunisia, they are the only nation in the quartet to have played in a qualification tournament for Tunisia 2025 and solitary one to have appeared in a previous edition of the youth world championship.

This generation of Spanish men’s beach handball players known as ‘Los Hispanos’, come to North Africa as YAC 16 EURO 2024 silver medallists, but on the back of teams who have come before then and medalled on the global stage.

After making their global beach handball debut at the 2022 IHF Men’s Beach Handball World Championship in Greece, Puerto Rico returned with both a men’s and women’s team for the 2024 IHF Beach Handball World Championships, held in China last year.

Now, in 2025, the youth can get involved too, as the men’s U17 team – nominated by their continental federation – become the first side from the country to appear at an IHF Youth Beach Handball World Championship.