India to host the 2023 FIH Men’s Hockey World Cup

After having successfully hosted the 2018 edition of the FIH Men’s Hockey World Cup, India will host the 2023 edition, the world governing body FIH announced on Friday.

This will be the fourth instance where India will play host to the marquee event on its soil. The nation has previously hosted the World Cup in 1982 (Mumbai), 2010 (New Delhi), and 2018 (Odisha).

While the Men’s World Cup will be held from January 13-19, Spain and the Netherlands will co-host the 2022 FIH Women’s World Cup from July 1-22. The venues are expected to be announced at a later date.

Commenting on awarding the respective hosts with the World Cups, FIH CEO Thierry Weil said, “FIH has received excellent bids to host these prestigious events. It was therefore a difficult choice to make. Since the primary mission of FIH is to grow the sport worldwide — which of course requires to make investments — the income-generation potential of each bid has played an important role in the decision.”

Meanwhile, the Hockey India president Mohammad Mushtaque Ahmad also expressed his delight at the FIH’s announcement. “We are all very delighted to have won the bid to host the 2023 Men's Hockey World Cup. When we had made the bid, we wanted to give our country another reason to celebrate 75 years of independence, adding to that the fact that our last win was registered in 1975. And what better way to celebrate than to witness a pinnacle global event of our national sport on our soil,” he said in a statement released by Hockey India.

“After having hosted the 14th edition of the Men's Hockey World Cup in 2018, which was recognised as one of the best hockey events ever, we were confident that we can host another Men's Hockey World Cup, and we are all very delighted about the prospects of hosting the top hockey-playing nations in India. We have the opportunity to use last year's experience to organise an even better Men's Hockey World Cup in 2023.” Ahmad continued.

The FIH also announced the qualification process for the 2023 World Cup. The teams can make it to the big-ticket event in the following manner:

• The hosts will qualify automatically (1 team)
• The winners of the Continental Championships will qualify directly (5 teams)
• The remaining 10 teams will qualify through a home-and-away play-off; the 20 teams involved in these qualifiers will be determined by Continental quotas, based on the world rankings at the end of the 2020 Olympic Games and the finishing positions of teams in the continental competitions.

Meanwhile, the schedule for the women’s World Cup will be as follows:

Preliminary Phase

• 2 Preliminary phase pools in the Netherlands (including the Dutch team)
• 2 Preliminary phase pools in Spain (including the Spanish team)

Quarter-finals

• 2 crossover matches and 2 quarterfinals in the Netherlands
• 2 crossover matches and 2 quarterfinals in Spain

Final phase (Spain)

• Semifinals
• Third-place playoff
• Final