Six Thursday matches wrap up round 1 of qualifiers
A day after the Women's EHF EURO 2026 Qualifiers opened, the remaining six matches in round 1 are scheduled for Thursday (16 October) as 12 more teams join the fight for the tickets to the final tournament, which will be played in Poland, Romania, Czechia, Slovakia, and Türkiye. Thursday's schedule includes four teams that have won EHF EURO medas in the past — the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, and Spain.
The match against Bosnia Herzegovina marks the start of an important phase for us, with the European Championship Qualifiers and later the World Championship. We are excited to see where we stand as a team and look forward to giving our best performance in front of our home crowd.
It’s going to be a very tough match. We coming into this camp with a weakened squad — we can’t count on all of our players, and some of those who are here are dealing with injuries. Switzerland are a very strong team, so it will be a big challenge for us and for our young squad. But I believe the players will give their maximum on the pitch.
We want to play a good game for our home crowd on Thursday, in which we want to play fast above all else. The goal is to start the European Championship qualifying series as well as possible.
The Netherlands are a team that need no introduction. They have a super-fast game and very strong individual players. Our primary goal will be to play a very strong defence and try to give our best in attack. We have a young team that is trying to improve at international level, so our goal will be to give it our all.
We have the goal and the dream to be in a major competition. This is what we want and what we are working for. We can’t be afraid to assume this goal. Will it be easy? No! We are in the hardest group (according to last season's rankings), but if we don’t succeed, we will be much closer to the EHF EURO after this qualification tournament.
We are really looking forward to kicking off the European Championship Qualifiers. Of course, we have great respect for our opponents, but at the same time, we know that we are the favourites in both matches and we are obviously going for four points this week.
It will be the first official appearance for several players in the national team. We have a very young squad, and although they do not yet have extensive experience in major tournaments, we believe they have developed considerably and improved significantly thanks to the excellent work being done within their clubs. This growth should be reflected in our performance during these upcoming matches.
