Floorball Wettkampf- und Verbandsmanagement

Floorball (also known by other names) is an indoor team sport. It is played on a 40 by 20-meter court enclosed by boards, using a lightweight plastic ball and two goals. During standard gameplay, each team has five outfield players and one goalkeeper on the court at any given time. The objective is to score more goals than the opposing team. Players use specialized floorball sticks during play. A standard match consists of three twenty-minute periods.

The game was invented in Sweden in the late 1960s. The basic rules were established in 1979 in Sweden. Official rules for matches were first written down in 1981.

The sport is organized internationally by the International Floorball Federation (IFF). As of 2022, there were about 330,000 registered floorball players worldwide. Events include an annual Champions Cup, EuroFloorball Cup and EuroFloorball Challenge for club teams and the biennial World Floorball Championships with separate divisions for men and women. Men's semi-professional club leagues include Finland's F-liiga, Sweden's Svenska Superligan, Switzerland's Unihockey Prime League, and the Czech Republic's Superliga florbalu. Women's semi-professional leagues from the same countries are F-liiga, Svenska Superligan, Unihockey Prime League and Extraliga žen.

While the IFF has 80 members, floorball is most popular where it has been developed the longest, such as the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland. It is gaining popularity in Australia, New Zealand, India, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

Floorball has been included in the World Games since 2017 edition in Wrocław.

The game of floorball is also known by many other names, such as saalihoki (in Estonia), salibandy (in Finland), innebandy (in Sweden and Norway), unihockey (in Switzerland, Germany and Ireland), unihokej (in Poland) and grindų riedulys (in Lithuania). The names salibandy and innebandy are derived from bandy and translate to "hall bandy" and "indoor bandy" respectively. In Sweden, voices have been raised to get rid of the word innebandy as name of the sport, to avoid confusions with bandy. The name unihockey is shortened from universal hockey since it is meant to be a special and simplified hockey form.

In various forms the game of floor hockey has been played since the early 20th Century in Canada as a recreational sport, especially in high school gymnasiums, as a playful variant of hockey. The basic design of floorball sticks is believed to have come from the ice skating team sport of bandy.

By the 1950s and 1960s many public school systems within Michigan in the United States incorporated floorball into their primary and secondary school gym classes. Americans have since claimed to have invented floorball. America held interstate tournaments in the 1960s.

Floorball was formally organized as an international and more organized sport in the late 1970s in Gothenburg, Sweden. The sport began as something that was played for fun as a pastime in schools. After a decade or so, floorball began showing up in Nordic countries where the former schoolyard pastime was becoming a developed sport. Formal rules were soon developed, and clubs began to form. After some time, several countries developed national associations, and the IFF was founded in 1986.

When the IFF was founded in 1986, the sport was played mostly in the Nordic countries, several parts of the rest of Europe and Japan. By 1990, floorball was recognized in 7 countries, and by the time of the first European Floorball Championships in 1994, the number had risen to 14. That number included the United States, who was the first country outside Europe and Asia to recognize floorball. By the time of the first men's world championships in 1996, 20 nations played floorball, with 12 of them participating at the tournament.

As of 2025, the IFF has 80 members, in addition to recognizing 11 other countries with ongoing floorball development. Of its members, 58 have national floorball associations that are recognized by the IFF. With the addition of Sierra Leone, Africa's first floorball nation, the IFF has at least one national association on each continent of the world, with the exception of Antarctica.

10 years after the IFF was founded, the first world championships were played, with a sold out final of 15,106 people at the Globen in Stockholm, Sweden. In addition to that, the world's two largest floorball leagues, Finland's Salibandyliiga and Sweden's Svenska Superligan were formed, in 1986 and 1995 respectively.

In December 2008, the IFF and the sport of floorball received recognition from the International Olympic Committee (IOC). In July 2011, the IOC welcomed the IFF into its family of Recognised International Sports Federations (ARISF). The IFF hoped that this recognition would help allow floorball to become a part of the 2020 Summer Olympics. As of 2024, the IOC has not announced any plans to add floorball to future Olympic games.

In January 2009, the IFF and the sport of floorball received recognition from the Special Olympics.

In addition to recognition by the IOC and Special Olympics, the IFF is also a member of the Global Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF, formerly SportAccord), and co-operates with the International University Sports Federation (FISU). Floorball is now also member of IWGA, which runs the World Games, and floorball is on the programme since Wrocław 2017.

In floorball, two teams compete against each other, each consisting of five outfield players and a goalkeeper. The standard formation includes three attackers and two defenders, who utilize movement and passing to penetrate the opposing defense and score a goal. A team typically comprises two to three complete lines of five players, who substitute freely on the fly without stopping play, usually in shifts of approximately one minute. A standard match co