IWBF Europe are delighted to announce that the IWBF U23 European Champions will be held in the Lignano Sabbiadoro, Italy, between the 8^th – 15^th January.

The event will be organised by Polisportiva Gradisca and the Federazione Italiana Pallacanestro in Carrozzina (FIPIC). The decision was made during a meeting with the FIPIC president Fernando Zappile and the president of IWBF Europe, Walter Pfaller, alongside the President of IWBF, Ulf Mehrens, the secretary general Maureen Orchard, plus IWBF Executive members Norbert Kucera and Charlie Bethel.

The Championships is the qualification tournament for the U23 World Championships to be held in July 2017 in Toronto, Canada. The five top finishing teams will all qualify for the U23 World Championships.

FIPIC President Fernando Zappile, the president of the Italian Federation, said “We are honoured to be awarded the chance to host this special event. We think that events such as these are extremely important to develop our young players that will ultimately feed in to our National teams.

“Last year we hosted the Women’s European Championships B as well as other major events, so we have experience in organising such competitions and we hope that we can provide the best tournament for everyone involved.”

President of IWBF Europe Walter Pfaller said, “We are really pleased that the Italian Federation expressed a wish to host the U23 European Championships. This is a qualifier for our European countries for U23 World Champions later this year in Canada so it was vital we are able to host the competition and we know that the Italian Federation are experienced in hosting and providing professional wheelchair basketball tournaments as we’ve seen previously. We are looking forward to working with the Italian Federation to put on a great championships.”