The UEFA European Championship

The Euros are contested by national teams from across Europe, all of which belong to UEFA, football's European governing body. The competition is held every four years and runs across about a month in the summer, with the host country or countries selected by UEFA in advance.

The trophy is the Henri Delaunay Trophy, named after the UEFA general secretary who proposed the tournament in the 1920s. The first edition was held in 1960, three decades after the World Cup began, and the format has grown several times since.

The finals begin with six groups of four teams, each playing the other three in their group once. The top two teams from every group go through to the round of 16, joined by the four best third-placed teams. From the round of 16 onwards the tournament is straight knockout, with extra time and a penalty shoot-out used to decide matches level after 90 minutes.

There is no third-place play-off — the two beaten semi-finalists do not play a further game. The final decides the European champion, who is awarded the Henri Delaunay Trophy. Group positions are decided on points first. If teams are level, UEFA first uses head-to-head results between the tied teams, followed by head-to-head goal difference and head-to-head goals scored, before moving to overall group goal difference, goals scored and other tiebreakers if needed.

The Euros traditionally fall in even-numbered years that are mid-way between World Cups. The matches are played in June and July, when the European domestic season has ended. The tournament has been hosted by a single country in most editions, although recent tournaments have used joint or multi-country hosting.

The one exception to the four-year cycle in recent decades was the 2020 edition, which was postponed to 2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic. The tournament returned to its usual rhythm with Euro 2024 in Germany.

The main qualifying route is a group stage played before the tournament. UEFA splits the qualifying field into groups, with each team usually playing the others home and away. The highest finishers from each group qualify directly for the finals, although the exact number of direct places depends on the rules for that edition.

A small number of additional places are usually decided through play-offs linked to the UEFA Nations League. Teams that did well in the Nations League but missed out on direct qualification can be given a second chance through a separate play-off route. This gives smaller European nations a more realistic route into the tournament than they had before the Nations League was introduced.

The Euros do not directly qualify teams for the World Cup or another major tournament. UEFA and CONMEBOL have revived the Finalissima, a one-off match between the European and South American champions, but it is better understood as an occasional intercontinental showpiece rather than a fixed part of Euros qualification.

The tournament's main purpose is to decide the European champion. Strong performances can still affect how teams are viewed and may influence rankings or seeding processes, depending on the rules used for later competitions, but the Euros themselves are not a qualification stage.

The first European Championship was held in France in 1960, with just four teams in the finals. The Soviet Union won the inaugural tournament, beating Yugoslavia in the final. The format and field expanded across the following decades — eight teams in 1980, sixteen in 1996, and twenty-four since 2016 — and the standard of competition rose with each expansion.

The tournament has produced several memorable underdog wins. Denmark, who entered the 1992 tournament only after Yugoslavia withdrew due to civil war, went on to win it. Greece beat hosts Portugal in the 2004 final despite never having won a match in a major tournament before that summer. Both wins are still cited as among the biggest upsets in international football.

The UEFA Women's European Championship is the senior women's equivalent and is also held every four years, generally in the year after the men's tournament. UEFA also runs age-group European Championships at under-21, under-19 and under-17 level for both men and women. These tournaments are followed less widely than the senior men's competition but use a similar format of qualifying campaigns into a final tournament.