These 18 teams then were paired to play a two-legged playoff tie to determine the nine remaining World Championship qualifiers from Europe.
[4] The draw saw 18 teams competing for nine places at the 2015 World Men's Handball Championship.
The teams were placed in two pots and drawn together to form nine play-off pairs.
After a two-legged tie the winner of each pair qualified to the final tournament.
All seeded teams (Iceland, Poland, Sweden, Hungary, Russia, Macedonia, Austria, Belarus, Serbia) and three unseeded (e.g. Norway, Czech Republic and Montenegro) had qualified for the play-off round as 12 of the 2014 European Men's Handball Championship which are not qualified directly to the final tournament.