Live blog: Excitement builds for Winamax EHF Finals 2026
The champions of the EHF European League Men 2025/26 season will be crowned at the Winamax EHF Finals 2026 at Barclays Arena in Hamburg this weekend. Before Montpellier Handball and THW Kiel, and then MT Melsungen and SG Flensburg-Handewitt will contest Saturday's semi-finals, Friday sees the final preparations with the last media calls and teams arriving at the hotel.
16:07
Before we continue with a closer look at the remaining two teams: who do you think will pick up the MVP award on Sunday evening? The past winners:
- 2021: Jannick Green — SC Magdeburg
- 2022: Sergey Hernández — SL Benfica
- 2023: Fabian Wiede — Füchse Berlin
- 2024: Emil Jakobsen — SG Flensburg-Handewitt
- 2025: Kevin Møller — SG Flensburg-Handewitt
- 2026: ???
This is certainly harder to predict than the top scorers title for the EHF European League Men 2025/26 season, as Axel Månsson leads with 98, although his IFK Kristianstad went out in the play-offs. Next in line is Flensburg's Marko Grgić. But, currently at 77, he will need 22 goals in this weekend's two matches to overtake Månsson...
15:55
Four months before he left Barcelona for Kiel last year, Gonzalo Pérez de Vargas tore his ACL. But since last November, the Spanish ace has formed one of the best goalkeeper duos in handball with Andreas Wolff. Both were key in Kiel’s qualification for the Winamax EHF Finals 2026, each saving a penalty in the quarter-final shootout against Nexe.
Read this Kiel feature from EHF journalist Björn Pazen:
This will be a very balanced tournament — more balanced than last year. Every participant carried problems through the season, but in recent weeks all teams have experienced an upswing. For us, Saturday is the day. We must not think about Sunday. The semi-final is our final.
We have a good team. We showed it when we beat Kiel last season here, but we could not beat them in the group matches. In the French cup, we beat PSG and Nantes — two Champions League teams. But you always know that a final tournament like this is a very open competition. You could see it when we won the Champions League in 2018.
14:33
With the Winamax EHF Finals 2026 taking place in Hamburg, the three German teams decided to hold their media calls already on Thursday. The only non-German team, Montpellier, arrived in Hamburg late yesterday and answered the journalists' questions this morning. You will find some of the most interesting quotes here on the live blog this afternoon when we have a closer look at each of the four participants.
For now, if you consider coming to Barclays Arena this weekend in person, do so! There are still a few tickets available for both playing days!
14:18
What is new this year, though, are the somewhat unusual throw-off times for the semi-finals on Saturday: Montpellier and Kiel open the Winamax EHF Finals 2026 already at 12:30 CEST, before Melsungen and Flensburg play the second semi-final at 15:30 CEST. The reason for the early starts is that organisers want to avoid a time collision with the UEFA Champions League final, which starts at 18:00 CEST. By the way, we will be back at the more usual playing times of 15:00 and 18:00 CEST for Sunday's medal matches.
The early throw-off changes nothing to the facts and figures in the semi-final preview written by EHF journalist Björn Pazen:
