Meeting yesterday and today in Cairo, Egypt, under the chairmanship of FIH President Tayyab Ikram, the Executive Board (EB) of the International Hockey Federation (FIH) received detailed updates about the upcoming FIH events including the FIH Hockey Women’s and Men’s Junior World Cups, the FIH Hockey Pro League Season 5, the inaugural FIH Hockey5s World Cup and the FIH Hockey Olympic Qualifiers.

Regarding the latter, the EB approved a move of the Women’s FIH Hockey Olympic Qualifier initially scheduled to be held in Changzhou, China to Ranchi, Jharkhand, India. This decision follows the direct qualification of the Chinese women’s national team to the Olympic Games Paris 2024 through winning the Asian Games recently.

EB members received a thorough update from the FIH President about his activities since the last meeting and were given a very positive report about the FIH financial situation for 2023.

They also held in-depth discussions about some of today’s key topics such as the various hockey formats, safety of the game and dry turf, including an in-person presentation from FIH Global Supplier Polytan General Manager Paul Kamphuis.

In order to strengthen FIH’s primary mission of growing the game further, the EB validated the creation or continuation of the following strategic Panels: Empowerment and Engagement, FIH Reform, Governance, Finance Risk and Compliance, Revenue and Commercial Partners, Olympic Programme, FIH Event Calendar, Event evaluation and allocation, Digital Engagement and Marketing Communication, Infrastructure and equipment initiative, HR and Awards as well as the Sustainability Task Force.

Furthermore, following consultation meetings with National Associations in the last couple of months, the proposal to create a FIH Nations Cup 2 tournament – with participating teams ranked below the Nations Cup ones – has been approved.

Further decisions:

  • The qualification system for the FIH Hockey World Cup Belgium-Netherlands 2026 – which will be a combined event involving the women’s and the men’s tournaments - was approved. It provides the winners of the FIH Hockey Pro League in the next 2 seasons with automatic qualification for the 2026 World Cup in addition to the 2 hosts (Belgium and the Netherlands) and the 5 Continental Champions. These 9 nations will be joined by a further 7 to come from the FIH World Cup Qualifying tournaments to be held in early 2026. The match schedule format has also been confirmed.
  • The 2024 and 2025 events global calendar was signed off; it includes all FIH events and the Continental Events that act as qualifiers for FIH and global events, including multi-sport events

  • The Curaçao Hockey Federation has been admitted as a provisional member of FIH. A potential full membership may be submitted to next year’s FIH Congress, provided that all necessary documentation is received by then
  • As the 4-year term of the FIH Judicial Commission Members is coming to an end this year, the EB has appointed the members of this Commission for the period 2023-2027; it will be chaired by Eduardo Guelfand (Argentina)
  • The EB has officially recognised the organisation “World Beach Hockey” and agreed a Memorandum of Understanding with this entity, therefore delegating the organisation of international Beach Hockey events to them and their members, who must be the National Associations of FIH, or a single organisation within a country that is recognised by the NA. With this move, Beach Hockey continues to sit as a format of hockey controlled and sanctioned by FIH.

It was the first FIH EB meeting attended by Marcos Hofmann, newly elected President of the EuroHockey.

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