History of Floorball

The origins of floorball are debated, with Canada, Sweden, and the United States all claiming to have invented the sport. The first modern floorball game took place in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1968, but similar versions were played in Canada and the U.S. as early as the 1950s. In Canada, it was known as “ball hockey,” while in the U.S. it was called “Cosom hockey,” named after the stick manufacturer Cosom.

Cosom hockey sticks — along with other early floorball sticks — were inspired by the lesser-known ice sport of bandy.

In the United States, Michigan is believed to have been the first to introduce this early form of floorball into its physical education programs. When the modern version developed in Sweden, a Swedish player brought it to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to continue playing his favorite sport.

The program grew and is still active today. Other early U.S. hubs for floorball included New York City, Silicon Valley, and the Dallas–Fort Worth area, each with strong Swedish and Finnish communities.

The first official floorball club, Sala IBK, was founded in Sweden in 1979. As the sport became more organized, basic rules were created, and by 1981 the first official rulebook was published. In 1989, Sweden had enough teams to launch the world’s first floorball league.

In 1986, Sweden, Finland, and Switzerland founded the International Floorball Federation (IFF), the first countries to establish national floorball associations. Since then, the IFF has grown to include 80 member countries ranked according to their World Championship performance. The first Men’s World Floorball Championship was played in 1996 in Stockholm, Sweden, with the host nation winning gold.

Another milestone came in 2011 when Manual Wheelchair Floorball was featured at the ParaGames, with teams from Sweden, Germany, the Czech Republic, and the Netherlands. Sweden won the tournament.

Floorball made its Special Olympics debut in 2013 as a demonstration sport in South Korea. By 2017, it was an official event at the Special Olympics Winter Games in Austria, where the Czech Republic won gold. Two years later, four North American teams — Arizona, Texas, Jamaica, and Trinidad & Tobago — competed in the 2019 Special Olympics Winter Games, showing the sport’s rapid growth.

Also in 2017, floorball appeared for the first time in the World Games in Poland. The six-team tournament featured Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, the Czech Republic, the United States, and Poland, with Sweden emerging as champion. These appearances were crucial steps toward floorball’s ultimate goal: becoming an Olympic sport.

In 2022, the North American Floorball League (NAFL) launched as the first high-level floorball league outside Europe, expanding to six teams by 2024. They now compete for the Troy Cup, named after influential floorball figure Adam Troy.

In 2024, the IFF sought new ways to make floorball more accessible and exciting by hosting its first 3v3 World Floorball Championship alongside the Women’s U19 WFC in Lahti, Finland. The event featured both men’s and women’s divisions, with 30 men’s teams and 14 women’s teams competing under a new rule set designed to promote non-stop action and high-scoring games on smaller courts. Latvia captured the men’s title, while Finland claimed victory in the women’s division.

Are you interested in playing floorball yourself? Learn how to choose your first floorball stick and then purchase equipment from our online store!

Sources: Wikipedia, floorball.sport, Floorballcentral.org, USAFloorball.org, innebandy.se, nafloorball.com