The European Athletics Youth Championships are a biennial athletics competition for European athletes under the age of eighteen (youth category).
The creation of the competition stemmed from the 2013 European Athletics Congress. The event was created to promote the sport among young people in Europe. Each country may send a maximum of two athletes per event. The European Youth Championships will be the third age category championships organised by the European Athletic Association, following on from the long-running European Athletics Junior Championships (first held for under-20 athletes in 1970) and the European Athletics U23 Championships (first held in 1997).
The first iteration of the championships is set to take place in 2016. This will mean that the event will serve in the alternate years between the European Youth Olympic Festival, another biennial under-18s event hosted by the European Olympic Committees.