UEFA Euro 2020

Bid process

While some countries had already expressed an interest in a UEFA Euro 2020 bid on 30 June 2012, at a press conference a day before the UEFA Euro 2012 Final, UEFA President Michel Platini suggested that instead of having one host country (or joint hosting by multiple countries), Euro 2020 could be spread over "12 or 13 cities" across the continent. At the time UEFA already used a similar system for the UEFA Under-17 Championship's "Elite Round" where each of the seven groups is hosted by a different country.

European format decision

On 6 December 2012 UEFA announced that the 2020 Finals would be held in multiple cities across Europe, to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the tournament. The selection of the host cities will not mean an automatic qualifying berth is awarded to the national team of that nation.

UEFA reasoned that the pan-European staging of the tournament was the logical decision at a time of financial difficulty across Europe. Reaction to UEFA's plan was mixed across Europe. Critics have cited the expanded format (from 31 matches featuring 16 nations to 51 featuring 24) and its associated additional costs as the decisive factor for only one nation (Turkey) having put forward a serious bid.

Bidding venues

The final list of bids was published by UEFA on 26 April 2014, with a decision on the hosts being made by the UEFA Executive Committee on 19 September 2014. There were two bids for the Finals Package (of which one was successful, marked with blue for Semi-Finals and Final) and 19 bids for the Standard Package (of which 12 were successful, marked with green for Quarter-Finals and Group Stage, and yellow for Round of 16 and Group Stage).

The 13 venues were selected and announced on 19 September 2014:

The 12 venues hosting group stage matches will be divided into six pairs, with each pair hosting one group. UEFA will draw up five or six lists of pairings, taking into account of sporting strength (assuming all host teams qualify), geography, and security/political constraints, and one list of pairings will be selected by draw in November/December 2017.

Qualification

There will be no automatic qualifying berth, and all 55 UEFA national teams, including the 13 national teams whose countries will stage matches, must compete in the qualifiers for the 24 places at the finals tournament. As the host cities were appointed by UEFA in September 2014, before the qualifiers of UEFA Euro 2020, it is possible for the national teams from the host cities to fail to qualify for the finals tournament.

With the creation of the UEFA Nations League starting in 2018, the 2018–19 UEFA Nations League will be linked with UEFA Euro qualifying, providing teams another chance to qualify for UEFA Euro 2020.

The main qualifying process will now begin in March 2019 instead of immediately in September 2018 following the 2018 FIFA World Cup, and will end in November 2019. The format will remain largely the same, although only 20 of the 24 spots for the finals tournament will be decided from the main qualifying process, leaving four spots still to be decided. Following the admission of Kosovo to UEFA in May 2016, it was announced that the 55 members at the time would be drawn into 10 groups after the completion of the UEFA Nations League (five groups of five teams and five groups of six teams, with the four UEFA Nations League Final Four participants guaranteed to be drawn into groups of five teams), with the top two teams in each group qualifying. The qualifiers will be played on double matchdays in March, June, September, October and November 2019.

Each Nations League division will be allocated one of the four remaining UEFA Euro 2020 places. Four teams from each division which have not already qualified for the Euro finals will compete in the play-offs for each division, to be played in March 2020. The play-off berths will be first allocated to each pool winner, and if any of the pool winners have already qualified for the Euro finals, then to the next best ranked team of the division, etc.

If in any division, there are fewer than four teams which have not already qualified for the Euro finals, the play-off berths will be allocated to the next best ranked team of the following division, etc. The winners of the play-offs for each division, to be decided by two "one-off" semi-finals (best-ranked team vs. fourth best-ranked team and second best-ranked team vs. third best-ranked team, played at home of higher-ranked teams) and one "one-off" final (venue drawn in advance between the two semi-finals winners), will join the 20 teams which have already qualified for the Euro finals. This means at least one team from each Nations League division will be guaranteed to qualify for the Euro finals.

Schedule

Below is the proposed schedule of the 2018–19 UEFA Nations League and UEFA Euro 2020.