2023 Hockey World Cup allotted to India

ISLAMABAD: The FIH Executive Board (EB) selected India to host the 2023 FIH Hockey Men’s World Cup (13-29 January 2023) and Spain and the Netherlands to co-host the 2022 FIH Hockey Women’s World Cup (1-17 July 2022.

The EB meeting, chaired by FIH President Dr Narinder Dhruv Batra, also decided that in order to further boost the development of hockey globally through the promotion of its 5-a-side format, “Hockey5s”, the EB has decided to create a FIH Hockey5s World Cup, with the inaugural edition planned for 2023. Continental Hockey5s tournaments will be organised and act as qualifiers. 16 teams per gender will take part in the first FIH Hockey5s World Cup.”

The EB received a detailed report on season 2019 and the ongoing preparations for the second season of the FIH Hockey Pro League, which will start on 11 January 2020 with the 2019 Women’s League winners, the Netherlands, playing China away. India (in the Men’s League) has also been included in the next league. Also, it includes a new match schedule which will reduce the travel of the teams by half, therefore decreasing costs for teams, benefitting athletes’ welfare and reducing the impact on the environment.

The EB expressed its full satisfaction with the format of the recently completed FIH Hockey Olympic qualifiers and outlined the great moments of hockey, the attendances and the audiences.

In order to promote competition between teams from different continents every year, FIH will launch in 2021 an annual event for the highest ranked teams not competing in the FIH Hockey Pro League. It will be an 8-team tournament in a single venue for each gender.

The competing teams will be invited based on the FIH World Rankings at the end of the previous year’s FIH Hockey Pro League. From 2022, the FIH Intercontinental Cup champion will be promoted to the following year’s FIH Pro League to replace the bottom team who will be relegated.

The FIH will launch a new match-based FIH World Rankings system. This new system will increase opportunities for all National Associations to gain ranking points besides accurately reflecting current performance.

It will also provide weekly rankings and live narrative to every official match with the impact of the result on the world rankings table being known immediately. It will also provide an opportunity to all nations who play international matches to have a world ranking. The next EB meeting will take place on 13-14 March in Lausanne.