2010 European Men's Handball Championship qualification

This page describes the qualifying procedure for the 2010 European Men's Handball Championship.

The 2010 European Men's Handball Championship qualification matches took place from October 2008 to June 2009. In a new format approved by the European Handball Federation (EHF), only Austria (host nation) and Denmark (defending champion) qualified automatically for the final tournament, while all other national teams had to play the qualification round to reach the European Championship.

For the 2010 European Championship, a new qualification system was used for the first time, following its approval by the European Handball Federation (EHF) at its 9th extraordinary congress, in Lillehammer, Norway, on January 26, 2008. Under this new system, all participating national teams, except the host country and defending champion teams, had to play the qualification round in order to reach the final round tournament.

Sixteen teams were to participate in the final tournament in Austria, whose team qualified directly by virtue of being the host nation, along with Denmark, the 2008 champion. From EHF's 50 member federations, 38 had initially registered for the qualification matches, but with the withdrawal of Georgia and Moldova, only 36 teams played for the 14 final places still available. These teams were drawn into six groups of five teams and one group of six teams. Each team played twice against all the other teams in its group, in a home-and-away basis, and at the completion of all matches, the top two teams from each group qualify for the final tournament.

The draw for the qualification round was held on April 18, 2008, during the EHF Competitions Conference, in Vienna. Teams were allocated to several pots according to EHF's national team ranking, and were successfully drawn so that each qualification group contained one team from each pot. Teams ranked 1–4 were drawn into one of the five-team groups.

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