The Slovenian men's ice hockey team has qualified for the 2025 IIHF World Championship, the elite level of international ice hockey competition, by securing a top-two finish at the ongoing World Championship Division I in Bolzano, Italy.

Slovenia defeated Japan 3:1 on 3 May and Hungary beat Italy 3:2 in overtime for the two neighbouring nations to secure promotion to the elite level next year.

Slovenia opened the tournament with a 2:4 loss to South Korea on 28 April, but followed this up with a 6:1 thrashing of Romania two days later and then beat the hosts Italy 2:0 on 1 May to keep the hopes of advancing alive.

After the win against Japan, Slovenia will play Hungary in the last round, but the result has no significance in terms of the advancement to the World Championship.

"A lot of work has been invested in this. We started building the project last year. Everything went as planned until the first match, but we believed in what we had been doing all season," said Slovenia's head coach Edo Terglav.

He said that the team also had some luck but "we deserved the promotion".

This will be the 11th time that Slovenia compete in the elite division, the first coming in 2002.