Handball (team handball) in 1936: Olympic debut in Berlin

International Handball Federation (IHF), founded in Copenhagen in 1946; its amateur predecessor dates to 1928 Indoor court 40 by 20 metres, goals 3 by 2 metres, and a 6-metre goal area no field player may stand in Two halves of 30 minutes, with elite teams now scoring around 30 goals each

Outdoor 11-a-side handball debuted in 1936; the indoor game has been Olympic since Munich 1972 for men and Montreal 1976 for women France, with 6 (1995, 2001, 2009, 2011, 2015, 2017) Handball is the highest-scoring team sport played indoors. Seven against seven on a court 40 metres long and 20 wide, two halves of thirty minutes, and a final score that routinely passes sixty goals between the two sides. The premise is simple: carry, bounce or pass a ball small enough to palm in one hand, take no more than three steps between dribbles, and throw it past a goalkeeper defending a frame three metres wide and two high. The complication is the six-metre arc in front of that goal, which no field player may stand in. Every shot is therefore taken from distance or launched from the air above the line, which gives the sport its signature image: a player suspended mid-flight over the crease.

Its heartland is continental Europe. Denmark, France, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Spain, Croatia and Hungary treat handball as a first-tier national sport, and the German Handball-Bundesliga fills arenas week after week. When Germany played Switzerland in Duesseldorf at the 2024 European Championship, 53,586 people came, a world record for the sport. The International Handball Federation counts roughly 27 million players across more than 200 member federations, and the map is widening: Egypt reached the Olympic semifinals in Tokyo, Qatar reached a World Championship final in 2015, and Brazil's women won the world title outright in 2013. Handball is Europe's biggest indoor sport and, quietly, one of the most played games on Earth.