The European qualification for the 2021 World Women's Handball Championship, in Spain, was played over two rounds. In the first round of qualification, 17 teams who were not participating at the 2020 European Championship were split into two groups of four and three groups of three teams. The top two teams of each group advanced to the second phase, where the teams joined the remaining 10 teams from the European Championship and played play-off games to determine the qualified teams.