The UEFA Nations League

The Nations League is open to UEFA's senior men's national teams, with participating teams split into four tiers — Leagues A, B, C and D — based on their previous results. Teams play matches against others in their tier across the autumn international windows, and then either move up, stay in place or move down for the next edition based on results.

The competition was set up to give meaning to international windows that had previously been filled with friendly matches between teams of widely different standards. With every match contributing to promotion, relegation or the chance to play in the finals, the Nations League turned routine fixtures into part of a serious competition.

The four leagues are organised by strength, with League A containing the strongest national teams and League D the lowest-ranked teams. Leagues A, B and C each contain 16 teams split into four groups of four. League D has six teams split into two groups of three. Each team plays the others in its group home and away across the international windows in September, October and November.

The group winners of Leagues B, C and D earn promotion to the league above for the next edition. The fourth-placed teams in Leagues A and B are relegated automatically, while the third-placed teams in Leagues A and B enter promotion/relegation play-offs against runners-up from the league below. League C is slightly different: the two lowest-ranked fourth-placed teams are relegated directly to League D, while the two best-ranked fourth-placed teams enter play-offs against the League D runners-up.

Since the 2024–25 edition, the group winners and runners-up of League A advance to two-legged quarter-finals, played the following March. The four quarter-final winners go on to the Nations League Finals — a four-team tournament played the following June, with two semi-finals, a third-place play-off and a final. One of the four finalists hosts the tournament.

In the earlier editions, the four group winners of League A went directly to the finals, without the extra quarter-final round. The current format adds an extra knockout step that gives more teams a chance to reach the showpiece event.

The group stage is played in the September, October and November international windows of the first year. The League A quarter-finals are played the following March, with the finals tournament held in June. The next league phase normally begins in the autumn after the next major summer tournament — either a World Cup or a Euros — has been played.

The two-year cycle means a Nations League edition runs in every period between major tournaments, giving European football a continuous competitive structure across the international calendar.

The competition is open to UEFA member associations automatically — there is no qualifying tournament to enter it. Teams are allocated to a league based on the overall ranking from the previous edition. New UEFA members would normally enter at the bottom of League D.

The host of the Nations League Finals is selected by UEFA from the four teams that have already qualified for the finals tournament. The host is therefore one of the competing teams rather than a country chosen years in advance, as is the case with the Euros or the World Cup.

The inaugural Nations League was won by Portugal in 2019, who beat the Netherlands in the final at home in Porto. France won the next edition in 2021, beating Spain in the final in Milan. Spain themselves won the third edition in 2023, beating Croatia on penalties. Portugal won their second title in 2025 in Munich, becoming the first nation to win the competition twice.

Across those four editions the trophy has stayed within a small group of strong European nations, although other countries have reached the finals and the format means an underdog winner is plausible in any future edition.

UEFA approved the Nations League in 2014 after years of complaints — from national coaches, broadcasters and players — that friendly matches in the international windows had become meaningless. The first edition was played in 2018–19, with the format adjusted slightly after each edition as UEFA refined the balance between the group phase and the finals tournament.

The expansion to a knockout quarter-final round, introduced in 2024–25, was the largest change since the competition began. It gave the runners-up of each League A group a route to the finals and brought more competitive matches into the spring international window, which had previously been used mostly for qualifying.

The UEFA Women's Nations League was launched in 2023 and uses a similar league-based idea, with promotion and relegation between tiers. Unlike the men's competition, it uses three leagues rather than four. It forms part of UEFA's wider women's national-team qualifying system, linking Nations League performance with later European Qualifiers for major tournaments.

UEFA has also moved some youth qualifying competitions towards Nations League-style formats, especially at under-17 and under-19 level. These are not separate Nations League tournaments, but they use similar ideas: leagues, promotion, relegation and more competitive fixtures instead of uneven one-off qualifying groups.