The 2016–17 Handbollsligan is the 83rd season of the Handbollsligan, Swedish's top-tier handball league. A total of fourteen teams contest this season's league, which began on 13 September 2016 and is scheduled to conclude on 27 May 2017.
The first 7 rounds consist on a round-robin tournament with 2 groups of 7 teams each. Then, the competition format for the 2016–17 season consists of a home-and-away round-robin system. The top 8 teams qualifiy directly to quarterfinals, while teams ranked 11th to 13th play a play-down round against teams ranked 2nd to 4th from the lower division. Last ranked team is directly relegated to Allsvenskan.
The following 14 clubs competed in Handbollsligan during the 2016–17 season. HK Drott was relegated from the previous season and IFK Ystad was promoted from 2015-16 Allsvenskan.