The Executive Board of the International Hockey Federation on Thursday announced Belgium and the Netherlands as joint-hosts for the 2026 FIH Women’s and Men’s Hockey World Cup, which will be held simultaneously.
The combined event will take place in July or August 2026 in Amsterdam/Amstelveen, Netherlands and Wavre, Belgium, with women’s and men’s teams playing in both venues.
The proposed format for the match schedule - with one local team, Belgium or the Netherlands, playing each day in order to make sure to fill the venues every day.
Commenting on the decision, FIH CEO Thierry Weil said: “On behalf of FIH, I would like to thank wholeheartedly all National Associations that submitted a bid. We received excellent proposals and it was therefore a particularly challenging task to decide. We’re very much looking forward to working with the National Associations of the current Women’s and Men’s World and Olympic Champions, the Netherlands and Belgium respectively, that will undoubtedly put together outstanding World Cups.”
On a different note, the EB received a comprehensive report on the FIH Finances. Thanks to additional income and reduced expenses, the final operational profit for 2022 is expected to be higher than the 500k CHF budgeted. The FIH Hockey Pro League operational result is also positive by 129k for season 3 (2021-22) and is expected to amount to at least 150k for season 4 (2022-23).
For 2023, the budget has been approved by the EB. The expected FIH financial result is an operational profit of 1m CHF (including 150k profit from the FIH Hockey Pro League) thanks, to a large extent, to the upcoming FIH Hockey Men’s World Cup in India.