Floorball is a type of floor hockey with five players and a goalkeeper in each team. Men and women play indoors with 96–115.5 cm-long (37.8–45.5 in) sticks and a 70–72 mm-circumference (2.8–2.8 in) plastic ball with holes. Matches are played in three twenty-minute periods. Floorball was included in the World Games for the first time in 2017 in Wroclaw, Poland. Sweden were the first World Games gold medal winners.

Its origins can be traced back to Michigan Lake in the 1960s where a game called Cosom Hockey was developed, although the present type of floorball was invented in Sweden in the 1970s.[1]The basic rules were established in 1979 when the first floorball club in the world, Sala IBK from Sala, was founded in Sweden.[2] Official rules for matches were first written down in 1981.[3]

The sport is organized internationally by the International Floorball Federation (IFF). As of 2014, there are over 300,133 registered floorball players worldwide.[4] Events include an annual Euro Floorball Cup for club teams and the biennial World Floorball Championships with separate divisions for men and women. Norway, the Czech Republic, Finland, Sweden, and Switzerland have consistently placed 1st, 2nd, or 3rd at the World Floorball Championships. Professional club leagues include Finland’s Salibandyliiga and Sweden’s Svenska Superligan.