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27th IHF Women’s Handball World Championship

SportVibes in collaboration with the National Handball Federation

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CASE STUDY

SportVibes and the National Handball Federation selected us to design and produce a unique Presidents Cup trophy and 120 medals for the official rankings of the 27th IHF Women’s Handball World Championship, with the aim of creating awards that captured the dynamic nature of the sport and connected professional athletes with the wider amateur community.

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Presidents Cup 27th IHF Women’s Handball World Championship
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Official tournament ranking medailles 27th IHF Women’s Handball World Championship
The Challenge

Awards That Capture the Spirit of the Game

SportVibes and the National Handball Federation asked us to design a Presidents Cup trophy and a full set of medals for the 27th IHF Women’s Handball World Championship. The brief called for awards that went beyond a generic sports trophy: the design needed to reflect the speed and motion of the sport itself, while creating a genuine link between the professional tournament and the amateur clubs that form the backbone of Dutch handball.

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Materials

A Sculptural Tribute to the Sport, Built from the Community

The trophy’s sculptural form traces the arc of a handball in flight, from the throw to the moment it crosses into the net, while its base is made from material sourced from decommissioned handballs, reclaimed and inlaid into metal. The accompanying set of 120 medals carries the same idea further: each one is finished with a hand-shaped emblem made from recycled T-shirts donated by Dutch amateur handball clubs, physically linking the elite podium to the grassroots game. Developing this material and processing it in-house, from raw textile waste to a finished, wearable component, represents one of the most advanced material applications we have engineered for a sports award to date. The full concept was shaped in close collaboration with SportVibes and the National Handball Federation, with every trophy and medal delivered alongside a material passport documenting its origin and transformation.

The Result

From the Design Table to the World Championship Podium

The Presidents Cup and medals were presented on 14 December 2025, giving SportVibes and the National Handball Federation a strong platform for media coverage and storytelling around the tournament. For us, this project brought together several capabilities at once: translating the motion of a specific sport into sculptural form, integrating reused equipment and community materials into a premium design, developing custom sustainable materials in-house, and managing a complex, collaborative award programme from concept to delivery. The result is a set of awards that carry as much emotional value as engineering precision.

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