IFK Kristianstad

Ten Swedish Championships mark the honours board, but after winning in 1953, IFK Kristianstad went sixty-two years without another title, a stretch that took in relegation to the fourth tier and a financial crisis in the late 1990s. Two more followed, in 2023 and 2026, and the 2023 title came with the League and the Swedish Cup won in the same season.

The handball section grew out of Idrottsföreningen Kamraterna, a general sports club founded in Kristianstad in 1899, and only became a stand-alone handball operation in 2000.

HK Malmö is the rival that matters most; the two have met in SM finals as recently as 2018 and 2026, part of a wider set of Scania derbies that also draws in Lugi HF, Ystads IF and Önnereds HK. Further afield, the club reached the last 16 of the EHF Champions League in 2017-18 and the quarter-finals of the EHF European League in 2020-21.

Between 2015 and 2019 the team ran up an 80-match unbeaten home record against Swedish opposition, in front of crowds that give the club the highest average attendance in Swedish handball, at the Kristianstad Arena.