3 Historic Milestones Reached at 2025 World Men’s Handball Championship as Denmark Claims 4th Consecutive Title

Thirty-two teams, five locations, and over 100 games played. The 2025 IHF World Men’s Handball Championship was staged in collaboration with Denmark, Norway, and Croatia. The sport achieved at least three known milestones under these coordinates. In the final game of this edition, Denmark defeated Croatia 32–26 in a dominant performance to win the championship for the fourth time in a row. It was an amazing feat after they became the three-peat champions two years ago, which no one did before them.

Photo: IHF website’s headline on Denmark’s title at the 2025 IHF World Men’s Handball Championship (screenshot: inspiredbyhandball.com)

Denmark’s Reign With No End in Sight

Denmark’s run at the IHF World Men’s Handball Championship continued after the Scandinavian team defeated Croatia 32-26 in the final to win the title for the unprecedented fourth time in a row.

Denmark, which hasn’t lost a match in the tournament since 2017, put on another classic display in front of a crowded Unity Arena, located just outside the Norwegian capital of Oslo. With 13,384 spectators packed into the stands, the team that has dominated handball for the past eight years—a machine-like squad with a 36-match winning streak prior to the final—defeated Croatia, which was vying for a title 22 years after it had won its first one ever.

Why such a dominance? Because Denmark is the squad where the world’s best player right now and tournament’s MVP, Mathias Gidsel, is. They have Emil Nielsen, a goalie who seems unbeatable. Who else has wings like Niklas Kirkelokke and Emil Jakobsen, such a strong defense, and a quick attack? Scandinavian bookmakers were well aware of those facts, setting the team from their region as a heavy favorite in the final. It was evident how all would end when Denmark surged to a 24-14 lead with 20 minutes remaining.

It has never happened at this level before: Denmark won the IHF World Men’s Handball Championship for the fourth time in a row with their ninth straight victory in Croatia/Denmark/Norway 2025. A wonderful accomplishment was achieved even without some of the world’s top handball players, such as Mikkel Hansen and Niklas Landin, who retired following the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

2025 World Men’s Handball Championship Has Seen 3 Feats

The total number of titles a player has won in this tournament is the first of these milestones. The Frenchman Thierry Omeyer, who won five gold medals with France during his career—one more than his countrymen Nikola Karabatić, Jérôme Fernandez, Michaël Guigou, Daniel Narcisse, and Cédric Sorhaindo—still holds the record. Since none of them competed in this event, attention was drawn to the Danes Simon Hald, Mads Mensah Larsen, and Magnus Landin Jacobsen, who each took the court to try and win a fourth straight title. The three became nearer to France’s legendary goalie after winning gold against Croatia.

The 2023 IHF Male Player of the Year, Mathias Gidsel, has already scored 99 goals in just two IHF World Men’s Handball Championships. He, therefore, needed one more to reach his 100th, which the right-back got against Algeria when Denmark played in the Jyske Bank Boxen on the first day of Croatia/Denmark/Norway 2025. Gidsel scored 10 goals in the championship game only to reach the 70-goal milestone in the recently finished competition.

Chile has participated in every IHF World Men’s Championship since its debut in 2011, also attending this one. And a mainstay in the South American team’s play, Rodrigo Alonso Salinas has played in each of them. The 35-year-old right back, who’s one of the most reliable goalscorers in the game, has scored 241 goals in the seven World Championships he has participated in before Croatia/Denmark/Norway 2025. With just 59 goals needed to become the fifth player with at least 300 goals, Salinas was even more keen to join the exclusive group that had at least 250 goals at the World Championship. He was able to accomplish the second, more feasible milestone, but not the first. By the way, Salinas scored 18 goals against Iran in 2015, making him the player with the most goals in a single game in the competition.

Germany became the first team to reach the 5000-goal mark in the premier handball competition in the world. Prior to the 2025 edition, they were at 4,803 goals, with 197 goals needed to reach that total. Germany hit the milestone in the quarterfinal loss to Portugal.