The 2026 IHF Beach Handball Global Tour opened in Zagreb with home-soil glory for Croatia's men and a polished win for Portugal's women, kicking off the fifth edition of the global circuit and setting the tone for an unusually loaded Beach Handball season.
Croatia's men beat European rivals Spain in the gold-medal match on a Zagreb beach venue purpose-built for the discipline, with a partisan crowd lifting the home side through both halves. Portugal's women then matched the result with a final-day triumph over Croatia's hosts, capping a tournament in which the Iberian side's set-piece play stood out across multiple matches.
"2026 IHF Beach Handball Global Tour Stage 1: Zagreb opens fifth edition," the IHF confirmed at the tournament's launch. "Portugal women and Croatia men win in Zagreb."
Beach Handball is in a moment of clear momentum. The IHF's expanded Global Tour now includes events on every inhabited continent, with subsequent 2026 stages already locked into Africa, the Americas and Asia. The discipline has also been confirmed as part of the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic test programme — short of full medal status, but a clear marker of the IOC's interest in the format.
Stage 1's other narrative was women's growth. The Portuguese, Croatian, Spanish and Brazilian women's teams have invested heavily in dedicated beach programmes over the last 24 months, and the technical quality on show in Zagreb — particularly around in-flight scoring and goalkeeper-as-attacker rotations — is now markedly higher than the discipline saw at the 2024 World Championships.
For Croatia, the men's win is a confidence boost ahead of a busy summer. The country will host the 2026 IHF Beach Handball World Championships on the Adriatic coast later this year, with the Stage 1 result giving the home side a strong platform from which to build squad chemistry. The bronze-medal match between Croatia and Serbia at the same Zagreb event drew large crowds in person and on stream.
Stage 1's prize-money pool again exceeded the previous edition, and the IHF confirmed in its post-event release that television deals across multiple European territories had been extended for 2026. Beach handball's combination of fast-paced scoring, beach-friendly broadcast aesthetics and growing parity between confederations is doing its job: keeping the discipline visible on a calendar dominated by football and athletics.
