The aim of this paper was to determine the differences in the situational efficiency of the Croatian men's handball national team and medal winners at world handball competitions in the period from 2017 to 2023. Handball is a complex, team sport in which variable forms of high-intensity movement prevail. Due to the high variability of movement, it is considered one of the most complex sports. Some of the earliest forms of handball have been found at archaeological sites in Greece. Today, it is considered that modern handball originates from the Scandinavian countries. In Croatia, Dr. Franjo Bučar is considered the father of handball, who first used the name handball in his magazine. Until then, there was a similar game called hazena in Croatia. The negative results of the Croatian men's handball national team over the past 6 years at major competitions was the impetus for conducting this research. In this paper, 301 matches were taken into account, which took place between Croatia and the winners of medals at the European and World Championships. The data were taken from the official website of the European and World Handball Federation. The research included data from the matches of the group and final stages of the competition. Data were collected on the situational efficiency parameters of 23 medal winners in a total of eight tournaments played, which were compared with the data on the situational efficiency parameters of the Croatian national team, which won the silver medal at the 2020 European Championship in the specified period. The data were systematized, entered and processed using the Microsoft Excel program. In the descriptive analysis of variables, measures of central tendency were used: arithmetic mean and standard deviation. The Mann-Whitney U test was used to determine the statistical differences between Croatia and the medalists. The processing of the collected data led to the conclusion that there is no statistically significant difference between the situational efficiency of the Croatian men's handball team and the medal winners, but it was determined that there was a negative trend among the Croatian goalkeepers. This negative trend made the difference between the Croatian national team and the medalists at the world and European championships.