The European Beach Tour finals to conclude the 2016 season will be held this Friday to Sunday in Gaeta, with all matches streamed live for beach handball fans around the world to watch the best club teams in the continent vie for two trophies.

The weekend in Italy is the culmination of last summer’s competition, where teams from across Europe competed in a series of tournaments, accumulating points at each event toward the overall ebt 2016 ranking. From 26 to 28 May, 10 teams will compete in each gender with both the men’s and women’s champions of the 2016 season to be decided.

Defending women’s champions Multichem-Szentendrei N.K.E. from Hungary begin their campaign from preliminary Group A, taking on teams from Croatia, Spain, Slovakia and Greece, while Group B includes squads from Hungary, Croatia, Russia, Germany and Italy. Szentendrei were the champions of the 2015 season and currently lead the ebt 2017 after winning the first competition of the season at the end of April.

The defending champions in the men’s competition, Greek side G.A.S. Kilkis Akropolis, also drew Group A, where they will meet teams from the Netherlands, Spain, Poland and Portugal. Group B includes exactly the same line-up of nations as the women’s competition: Hungary, Russia, Germany, Italy and Croatia. Croatia are represented by six-time ebt champions Detono Zagreb, who are the current frontrunners in the ebt 2017 season.

From the preliminary round the top two teams in each group qualify for the semi-finals.

All matches will be streamed free on ehfTV’s official YouTube channel.

The playing schedules are available on the following links:

Men’s schedule

Women’s schedule

 

Photo: Klara Zečević-Božić / Jarun Cup