The European Handball Championship takes place between January 15th and February 1st, 2026, in a joint organization between three countries: Sweden, Denmark and Norway. A championship in which Portugal participates, being included in Group B together with Romania, North Macedonia and Denmark. All Portuguese national team games are broadcast live on RTP2 and on RTP Desporto’s digital channels.
Portugal was the host of this championship
The first EHF Men’s European Handball Championship was the EHF EURO 1994 in Portugal, with 12 teams competing for the title.
In 2020, this tournament passed through Sweden, Austria and Norway, with the number of teams competing in this competition increasing to 24 teams. The 14th EHF European Championship was also the first final tournament hosted by three different countries.
In total, six different nations have won the European Men’s Handball Championship (EHF EURO) to date.
Sweden leads the medal table with five golds, but France is close behind, having won four editions of the EHF EURO so far, including the one in 2024. Spain, Denmark and Germany have two titles each; Russia reached the podium once.
Games from groups A, C and E today in dispute and live on RTP Desporto
On the sixth day of this tournament, the third round is being played today for some of the countries in group B, D and F, which you can watch on RTP Desporto’s digital channels, with emphasis on the national team’s game at 7:30 pm on RTP Desporto 1 and RTP 2:
- North Macedonia x Romania / 3rd J. – Group B (17h00) – Sport 1
- Montenegro x Switzerland / 3rd J. – Group D (17h00) – Sport 2
- Poland x Italy / 3rd J. – Group F (17h00) – Sport 3
- Denmark x Portugal / 3rd J. – Group B (7:30 pm) – Sports 1 and RTP 2
- Slovenia x Faroe Islands / 3rd J. – Group D (7:30 pm) – Sport 2
- Hungary x Iceland / 3rd J. – Group F (7:30 pm) – Sport 3
Portugal fights for qualification with difficult test ahead
The Portuguese handball team takes the field this Tuesday against four-time world champion and already qualified Denmark, looking to secure the last place in Group B in the “main round”.
Portugal will advance if it maintains second place using the tiebreaker criteria for third place or achieves at least a draw in the last match of the preliminary phase of the European Championship 2026. Ahead of them is the host and the best handball team currently, which always got the better of the Portuguese.
“They are the best team in the world at the moment. It will be very complicated. We have to be very assertive in finishing, because missing a shot doesn’t just affect the result, but also the state of mind. It will be a huge challenge to beat them”, explained the Portuguese coach.
After the victory over Romania and the surprise in the last game against North Macedonia, in which the ‘quinas’ team conceded a draw at the end of the day (29-29), Portugal complicated their qualification for the next round of the competition.
The path of the ‘Heroes of the Sea’
Portugal started their journey in Group B of the EHF EURO 2026 with a solid victory against Romania at Jyske Bank Boxen. In front of more than 10 thousand fans in the stands, the Quinas team won the first points in the preliminary phase.
Photo: Eva Manhart/Jure Erzen/kolektiff via FPA
Portuguese coach Paulo Pereira was satisfied with the athletes’ performance when implementing the objective established for the first meeting of the European Championship:
“We set ourselves the main objective of winning this game, but we also had some sub-objectives and one of them was to run the whole game. With as much humility as possible, we assumed that – with a lot of respect for Romania – we were also going to use this game to prepare for the next ones. As we didn’t have much training time and we were a bit lucky, let’s say theoretically, in this sequence of games – Romania, Macedonia and then Denmark – to be able to use the games to prepare ourselves physically to run, because we know that Denmark It is a team that prepares very well throughout the year, from young people who have an unusual physical capacity to play this game.”
Photo: Eva Manhart/Jure Erzen/kolektiff via FPA
Now it’s Portugal’s turn to play four-time world champion Denmark.
The Portuguese team and Denmark last faced each other in one of the semi-finals of the World Cup 2025, a competition in which Portugal achieved its best result ever in the final stages, placing fourth.
