The International Hockey Federation (FIH) on Tuesday announced the qualification criteria for the Paris 2024 Olympic hockey tournaments (Men and Women).

The qualification criteria have been approved by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the FIH’s Executive Board. As has been the case since Beijing 2008, 12 teams each (Men and Women) will play at the Olympic hockey tournaments, with each squad consisting of 16 athletes.

Following is the qualification criteria released by the FIH from its headquarters in Lausanne, (Switzerland)

Host Nation: 1 team (on the basis that both teams – Men and Women – have fulfilled the FIH criteria of achieving a ranking of 25 or better in the World Rankings since the end of the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, which is the case for both French teams)

Continental Qualifications: 5 teams; the winning team of each of the following continental competitions will qualify:

African Hockey Road to Paris, Pan American Games, Asian Games, EuroHockey Championship and Oceania Cup.  All these events are slated to held this year.

It was further clarified that should France also win the EuroHockey Championship , the second placed nation will not subsequently qualify, but the quota place will be allocated to the FIH  Olympic Qualification Tournaments;

FIH Hockey Olympic Qualification Tournaments: 6 teams

There will be 2 FIH Hockey Olympic Qualification tournaments per gender, consisting of 8 teams each (16 teams in total), held in early 2024. As announced last year, the number of teams from each Continent participating in these tournaments is based on quotas determined according to the FIH World Rankings of 31 January 2023.

On this basis, here are the continental quotas:

Women’s Olympic Qualifiers

Africa: 0,Asia: 4,Europe: 8,Oceania: 1,Pan America: 3

Men’s Olympic Qualifiers

Africa: 1, Asia: 5, Europe: 7, Oceania: 1, Pan America: 2

The teams filling each quota, and therefore invited to participate, will be based on their performance at the Continental Championships. The top 3 teams in each of these

Olympic Qualification Tournaments will qualify for Paris Olympics.

The bidding process for hosting the Olympic Qualification Tournaments  2024 will be released in a couple of weeks.