2024 European Women's Handball Championship bidding process

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

The bidding process for the 2024 European Women’s Handball Championship involved several countries and several twists. At first there were only a couple of bids, with Russia remaining in the race in 2017. However, Russia later withdrew from bids for the 2022 and 2024 events, and by 2018 the EHF decided to delay announcing the host.

In April 2019 the bidding reopened. By 20 September 2019 three new bids were in: Austria, Hungary and Switzerland publicly entered as a team, while Hungary had already shown interest and began talks with Austria and Switzerland. A separate group also bid from the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia under the banner So close. These three countries had never hosted an EHF Women’s Euro before. The proposed venues differed between the groups: Austria/Hungary/Switzerland hoped to stage main rounds in Debrecen and Budapest with the final weekend in Budapest’s MVM Dome; the Czech/Poland/Slovakia bid planned main rounds in Bratislava and Katowice with the final weekend in Kraków.

Russia pushed a separate bid with venues in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Krasnodar and Rostov-on-Don. After some changes, however, the Krylatskoye Sports Palace in Moscow and the Basket-Hall in Krasnodar were removed, and the Irina Viner-Usmanova Gymnastics Palace in Moscow and the Sportcomplex Zvezdny in Astrakhan were added. Russia proposed main round groups for Sibur Arena and VTB Arena, with the final weekend again in Moscow at the VTB Arena.

The host announcement was made on 25 January 2020 at the EHF Extraordinary Congress in Stockholm. Austria, Hungary and Switzerland won the bid, defeating the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia 28–21 in the second round.

In January 2023, Hungary’s government announced it would withdraw as a host for financial reasons, with Austria and Switzerland indicating they would renegotiate how the tournament would be held. The EHF said it was surprised by the potential withdrawal. On 16 March 2023 the EHF announced a change to the organization: Hungary would remain a co-host but have a reduced role, and the plan to hold a portion of the tournament at the MVM Dome in Budapest was scrapped in favor of hosting that portion in Vienna. Throughout the uncertainty, Romania offered to host if needed.