Hockey’s New Rules Are Live: The Penalty-Corner Changes Every Fan Needs to Know

Hockey changed on 1 November, and if you watch penalty corners, you’ll notice.

The FIH’s new Rules of Hockey are now in force at international level. National associations set their own dates for bringing them into domestic hockey, and the FIH has said it will avoid any major rule changes before the LA 2028 Olympics. So this is the game for the next two years. Here’s what actually changed.

The penalty corner is where most of it lands. Once the umpire blows the whistle to start a corner, the ball has to be injected without delay. Wait more than three seconds and the injector gets sent to the halfway line to be replaced. The corner itself is never reversed for it. It’s a small change with a clear purpose: stop the stalling.

The masks are changing too. Defenders can now take their penalty-corner face masks off as soon as it’s safe after the corner starts, instead of waiting for the whole thing to end. Anyone who’s watched a defender sprinting upfield in a mask will know why that matters.

There’s a new card in the book as well. If a player throws away penalty-corner protective equipment and it strikes an opponent above the knee, that’s a yellow card. Do something else card-worthy in the same game and it becomes a red. The message is simple: keep your kit under control.

The aerial rule is now permanent. The five-metre rule that was trialled stays, and a defender can close in once the receiver has touched the ball, not only once it’s been brought down to the ground. Receivers will have less time. Defenders will have more of a say.

Goalkeepers get a small equipment change. The maximum size of the left-hand protector goes up to 365mm. And Rule 11.6 clears up a whistle question: no extra whistle is needed to stop time for a penalty corner, because time stops on the award itself.

Some of this will already look familiar in Australia. Face masks are mandatory for all penalty-corner defenders at FIH events, national championships and in Hockey One, and the new mask rule is already being cited in provincial guidance, including for the BC School Sports championships on 11-13 November.

The game hasn’t been reinvented. But the corners will be quicker, the masks will come off sooner, and the first team to get caught out by the three-second rule will wish they’d read this first.