Live blog: Portugal and Norway remain close in vital match

15:00

The race for the semi-finals is hotting up, and both Portugal and Norway know they absolutely need a win to stay in it. Both are on two points - Portugal after winning group B with that victory over Denmark in the preliminary round, Norway after their main round 1 win against Spain. Both sides' chances also depend very much on other results, particularly for Spain to upset France in the second match today.

They are mid warm-up right now here at the Jyske Bank Boxen, with Norway just completing shuttle runs and Portugal doing passing practice.

14:40

A reminder that every day we update the referee nominations for the matches ahead. Today, Slovenians Bojan Lah and David Sok will whistle Portugal vs Norway, Mirza Kurtagić and Mattias Wetterwik of Sweden take charge of Spain vs France, and Montenegrin pair Ivan Pavičević and Miloš Ražnatović are refereeing Germany vs Denmark.

14:15

Arguably the most important game of the day in Herning is the last match, between Germany and Denmark. Here's Julian's Rux's stat of the day, demonstrating how important Simon Pytlick and Mathias Gidsel are to the Danish attack. We've seen teams try to shut them down in several previous games - can Germany succeed?

13:45

Spain might be out of the semi-finals race, but they're still here to play, fight for points - and have fun. Ian Tarrafeta and Daniel Fernández enjoyed picking their top 10 players of all time ...

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by RFEBM (@rfebalonmano)

13:10

Halfway through the main round, we've dug into some of the data from the tournament so far to find the player who's scored the fastest shot - click below to find out who he is! The data also shows that compared to 2024, shots are getting faster, and back-court players dominate.

12:45

It might have been possible to do a top 5 saves full of Andi Wolff, after what he produced on Saturday night - but that would have been unfair to the other great goalkeepers in round 2. Wolff still features (of course).

12:30

After two days with a lot of goals, here are the best ones from round 2 of the main round!

12:00

This time next week, we'll know who the 2026 European champions are.

But on this chilly winter Monday morning, we still don't know who any of the semi-finalists could be. All the leading contenders have lost one game, Spain are the only side in the main round with zero points and out of the hunt, and tonight's matches in group I will be critical.

So were last night's games in Malmö. A win for Sweden would have put them in a very strong position going into rounds 3 and 4 of the main round, but instead, they lost to Iceland. That left four teams on four points in group II, an intriguing situation before the last two nights of action.

Check in with 'The Spin' to find out how Martin Vilstrup and Bengt Kunkel reacted to Sunday's results.