17. January 2026
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My Wishes for the Floorball Year 2026 (or later…)

Florian Buechtingby Florian Buechting

I felt starting the year 2026 with a special posting. The sports of my heart is floorball. It is also by far the most frequented sports on Flyctory.com. I do floorball photography since 2001. I love the sports – but there are some thing I just would love to change. Or some things which would just make me happier. Why not start 2026 with a post about my personal wishlist? Hope you like that blog post. I split my wishes into several categories. Happy to discuss with you about it.

 

The Rules

The game lives from its rules – and that’s why I put this category first. What would I change about the game? Here are my thoughts.

The Penalty Shot

Since Finnish My Kippilä’s penalty shot at a WFC has been ruled as no goal, we feel to change the rules for that standard again and again. I feel that the current rule is a nightmare. From the simple rule that the ball has to move forward, we now limit the number of Zorro moves and only claim that either the ball or the player has to move forward. This leads to nice penalty shots, but also to a lot of discussions and an absolute challenge for the referees. Please bring back the old rule – or at least another, more simple one. This one is simply not working.

Bring back the double penalization

Another rule which I feel had been made worse. In the very past, for most of the penalty shots you committed, you also had to face a two minutes in case the opposing team is not successful. I liked that. Why? Because a penalty shot is finally due to a situation where a scoring opportunity was prevented by a foul. We should not make it too “cheap” to go for that, I feel.

Passive Play

Modern floorball more and more moves toward holding the ball, trying to seize the opponent’s defense, waiting for the right situation to play a dangerous pass into the weak spot of the opposite defensive line. For us as a floorball community, the strategical aspect and the technical skills necessary to do so may be fascinating. But I doubt that it makes the sports more attractive. Thus, I feel we need to think about a passive play rule. I feel that a shot clock like in basketball is not appropriate. It would also lead to too many discussions and also technical requirements in lower leagues. Maybe you should not be allowed to pass back into your own defensive half again (apart from being short handed?)? Maybe there should be passive play warnings like in handball? What do you think? I would love to give it a try!

Establish ONE way to play small field floorball

The 3×3 World Floorball Championships will go to its third edition this year in Spain. However, there are so many small field floorball styles (let’s exclude the small goal game for this one…), some even having different rulebooks. What looks the same, like German small field and Swiss small field, During my recent visit to Tampere, I saw that SC Classic is trying to establish floorball in a high rink court, similar to a padel one. We should agree and concentrate to one of them. 3-a-side floorball is a good thing, especially in less developed regions. And it does deliver more action in the ring as week.

 

German Floorball

Even though I travel for floorball internationally and have many friends and also strong emotions for certain international teams, Germany is my home country, my floorball home. And I see too many things which I simply would like to change. Here are my points I would like to change.

Proper match calendars and statistics

The – at least nationwide – schedule and statistics platform Saisonmanager is a nightmare. Yeah, it did improve in the past, but it is not really integrated into the website of the regional and national associations. Furthermore, it is extremely bothering to find out where floorball is played in your area next weekend. This Swedish federation, for example, do it much better. I feel that this platform does cost us too much publicity and audience at the moment.

Establish one Bundesliga platform

Quite in line with that, I would love to have a Floorball Bundesliga platform. It should have a unified look, at least featuring the first Bundesliga for Men and Women, maybe also the Men’s 2nd Bundesliga divisions. You could feature teams and stories there, have a central hub for results and find the right streaming service to see a match you are interested in (as well as replays). The Floorball Bundesliga is our “daily product”, the competition, which is the engine to drive the fancy stuff, like national teams or the German Cup Final 4.

Give more focus on the ladies

Women floorball needs a stronger audience – and especially in German floorball, we should fight for our ladies. Not only because it may still be easier to write success stories in women floorball compared to the men’s side. They are simply half of the population. There are some good initiatives, but I feel, we should simply tell more stories about them. Maybe having a monthly diary when a player is abroad, a special feature, a “Match of the Week” or so. Switzerland and Czechia recently proofed that people may love women floorball’s stories.

Focus on the stories, not on the goals

During the recent Women World Floorball Championships 2025, I again felt that the German association wastes too much energy into potentially wrong contents. While up to date scores and results could not be found on their website, there were quite some reels on social media. Yeah, you need them and some became very popular – but I am sure many of them did not reach the target audience. The people who do NOT know floorball yet. That’s why we do this competition nowadays. It’s a competitive event, but also our big floorball marketing show.

You can show special goals in cool camera views (and Germany does have some great talents for that), but to leave the bubble, you need to share stories, emotions. The sports reels I remember the most from the WFC is Lara Heini carrying injured Katarina Klapitova up the podium at the All Star Team nomination. Or Pontus Boman crying after the final because he is so proud of Lara and what she achieved. Another one I loved was the Faroese Women Handball National Team hanging out in their team hotel in Trier between their matches, many of them knitting. Because it is typical Faroese to do so. Make people smile, give them impressing stories. The week in Czechia was full of them. And the WFC organziers did great in that – but too few reached Germany.

 

International Leagues & Associations

I do have a certain international focus and try to see teams like Pixbo IBK or SB-Pro at least once a season. Nonetheless, I am typically not that deep into their structures, their federation work. Nonetheless, I wanted to raise some points here.

No more Super Saturdays, please!

Saturday, 25th April 2026 will be a nightmare to me. I still haven’t finally decided yet what I will do that weekend. I could go to Fribourg, I could go to Prague or I could head to good, old Stockholm (what I typically did the last years). All three big Floorball Superfinals, the ones in Czechia, Switzerland, and Sweden (Finland does play-off series finals) will be played on the same day. I know that these dates also depend on so many things, including the potential play-off match schedules of local professional ice hockey teams. But it feels to me like a waste of potential.

In my wildest dreams, I dream of a European Floorball Superfinal Weekend. Three days, one Federation each per day playing their finals in the same arena. Wouldn’t that be cool? I guess there are multiple reasons why this event will never happen. But imagining having something like that at Riga Arena, Lanxess Arena in Cologne, or in any other big arena in Europe feels too cool. Three days of high class floorball, international fans storming the city, leaving a mark in a place, which is not a big floorball place yet. I would love that, definitely. And dream on.

Free access to results and schedules

I did blame the German Association for the Saisonmanger. There are other countries and associations which struggle promoting scores, match snippets. The IFF app is a nightmare. I don’t want to register my phone just for the sake of a score or a lineup. Swiss Unihockey uses the same, other websites are rather complicated. Floorball is a great sports. In order to convince people of that, we need to give people outside of our bubble easy access to whatever they want to know, whatever they want to see.

 

Continental and Intercontinental Competitions

Germany beating Singapore by 19-0 in the group matches of the recent Women World Floorball Championships, but then being too weak to make it to the quarterfinals – the gaps between the teams in national team competitions, especially on the women’s side, are still huge. Here is what I would love to change.

Stepping Forward in the European Club Competitions

I loved that the IFF managed to re-introduce the EuroFloorball Cup in 2025. I feel it is a great opportunity for teams from smaller countries to play in a “European Cup” – without facing teams from leagues which are absolutely superior. It is good promotion, good experience. And, to be honest, some leagues in Europe do become a bit of boring as the list of clubs does not change too much. This is a new chance, a new challenge. Even if the level is far below Champions Cup. Hope that the competition can re-establish in 2026 and attract more teams from more countries.

Do a better World Cup, not a more complicated one

The ideas to restructure the World Floorball Championships and having them (per gender) just every four years is a nightmare. The idea of having “lower league World Championships” with more competetive matches is not wrong. But you need to find organizisers for these huge events (which will almost need the same level of organization than the main event). And you put a burden on the smaller teams. Apart from that I doubt that floorball can affort to have less WFC events. The recent tournament in Czechia illustrated so much that these weeks are one of the few where we draw a bit of worldwide attention to the sports. It will be tough to find a better event structure, but we should not give up on that thought.

More competition for the “smaller” countries

It has been the story of so many teams in so many years at World Floorball Championships. They play a (sometimes more or less) good tournament, advance to the quarterfinal… and then face one of the “Big 4” teams. When Germany did a sensational job against Sweden at the 2024 Men’s WFC in that situation, I checked how rarely they played against one of these teams before the last two years. We need upsets in the WFC quarterfinals. It will lead to a much more stunning event. For that, we need to prepare the smaller countries for these matches. And this means to me that we have to find a way that the Top 10 countries do have some two matches in preparation period against one of these teams. This kind of floorball development aid might not be popular for Sweden, Finland, Czechia or Switzerland. But finally they need these countries to keep our sports relevant.

 

… and some very personal ones…

These ones either have a very personal background or simply do not fit into an other category.

More free live streaming in Floorball

To me, there are two ways of getting more people into floorball. The second one is to create stories which they later somehow link with the sports. The straight-forward one is to expose them to the sports, make people watch it. Too many live streams and highlights are hidden behind logins and paywalls nowadays. We need to have a certain public archive of good floorball matches easily available for anyone.

Make more use of our Floorball Heroes

We do have these role models in floorballs. Icons, people you just have to like. And some of them do fantastic events. Like Flemming Kühl, founder of the FZ17 All Star Game in Hamburg. Give these people our support. They can help to make it grow.

SM-Guld please, Lara Heini

Swiss National Team goalkeeper Lara Heini was the athlete of the World Floorball Championships 2025 in Czechia to me. Not only that she was the most solid goalie, she is a true leader in our sports and an absolute role icon. I know her since she played Swiss youth league with Piranha Chur and loved to follow her career to this point. She simply deserved (like the whole Swiss team) to get that golden metal (with a shut-out in the final!). One medal she did not win, though, is the Swedish championship. I will likely be there in April 2025, I will likely see her again there – and this time, I just want to see her brightest smile.

 

Sports Blogging on Flyctory.com

Here are all Sports Blogging entries (no match reports or similar) on Flyctory.com:

 

Floorball Postings 2025

Here are all my floorball-related postings published in 2025:

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