The Handball Federation of Yugoslavia (RSJ) was founded on December 17, 1949 in Belgrade by merging republican and provincial federations, and became a member of the International Handball Federation (IHF) in 1950.
Field handball first match The first international match, played on June 19, 1950 at the stadium in Kranchevicheva Street in Zagreb, against Belgium. Yugoslavia won 18:3 playing with nine players from Zagreb and one each from Sarajevo and Split.Small handball was played publicly for the first time in Yugoslav territories on February 24, 1950, in the Fair hall (today the Technical Museum) on Savska aley in Zagreb. It was the first public handball match played in the hall.
Indoor Handball In the beginning, small handball was mainly played on open courts, and later more and more in halls. The possibility of playing in the hall and in a smaller space enabled continuous changes in the situation on the field and better contact with the spectators. That's why small handball was quickly accepted, and thus slowly supplanted big handball, which was played less and less.Until 1953, all official handball competitions in Yugoslavia were in large handball, and since then national championships in small handball have also been held. The main limiting factor in the further development of handball was football fields, whose administrations were reluctant to approve the holding of training sessions and matches. Big handball stopped being played officially in 1958. The only remaining handball, there was no longer any need to call it small handball, but simply - handball.
Modern Handball Yugoslavia played its first international small handball match in 1956 at the Tashmaidan Stadium in Belgrade against Sweden, the current world champions at the time. A draw was reached 6:6, and due to cloud cover the match was declared invalid. Yugoslav handball began to rise in the early 1970s reaching its height until 1990. At the time it was the most-winning handball team in the world, winning three medals at the
Olympic Games, four at the
World Championships, five at the
Mediterranean Games, one at the Goodwill Games, three at the World Handball Cups and two at the Handball Super Leagues. The biggest successes are the gold medals at the
1972 and
1984 Olympic Games, as well as the gold medal at the
1986 World Championship.
Following the breakup The team ceased to exist after the split of Yugoslavia in June 1991. Three former Yugoslav republics have since gone on to win medals at major competitions:
Croatia sixteen,
Serbia four and
Slovenia two. In the period from 2003 to 2020, Croatia was considered one of the best teams in international handball, winning the gold medal at the
2004 Summer Olympics and the
2003 World Championship, in addition to consistently earning major championship medals and their worst results being 6th place (
2015,
2019). Return to form for Croatia happened with the new coach
Dagur Sigurdsson who helped the team win (as of 2026) two consecutive medals (
2025,
2026). ==Accomplishments==