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The UEFA European Championship qualifying, branded as the European Qualifiers, is the process that
UEFA Union of European Football Associations (UEFA ; french: Union des associations européennes de football; german: Union der europäischen Fußballverbände) is one of six continental bodies of governance in association football. It governs fo ...
-affiliated national
football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly ...
teams go through in order to qualify for the
UEFA European Championship The UEFA European Football Championship, less formally the European Championship and informally the Euro, is the primary association football tournament organised by the Union of European Football Associations ( UEFA). The competition is conte ...
. In this article, the years represent the final tournaments of the European Championship, and are not meant to correspond to the actual dates when the qualification matches were played.


Format evolution


Resume

The
1960 It is also known as the "Year of Africa" because of major events—particularly the independence of seventeen African nations—that focused global attention on the continent and intensified feelings of Pan-Africanism. Events January * Ja ...
and 1964 qualifications were knock-out tournaments. The four quarter-final-winning teams qualified for the final stages, and one of them was chosen to host the competition. From 1968 onwards, a group stage began to be used as the main, or sole, component of qualification. In
1968 The year was highlighted by protests and other unrests that occurred worldwide. Events January–February * January 5 – " Prague Spring": Alexander Dubček is chosen as leader of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. * J ...
, 1972 and 1976, the winners of the eight groups advanced to a quarter-final stage, which was still part of the qualifying. The four quarter-final winners progressed to the finals. Again, the host nation was selected among the four finalists. From 1980, the hosting rights would be assigned in advance, and the host teams would be guaranteed automatic qualification. The format of the finals was expanded to feature 8 teams. Winners of qualifying groups now proceded to the finals directly. The
1980 Events January * January 4 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter proclaims a grain embargo against the USSR with the support of the European Commission. * January 6 – Global Positioning System time epoch begins at 00:00 UTC. * January 9 – In ...
,
1984 Events January * January 1 – The Bornean Sultanate of Brunei gains full independence from the United Kingdom, having become a British protectorate in 1888. * January 7 – Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeas ...
, 1988 and
1992 File:1992 Events Collage V1.png, From left, clockwise: Riots break out across Los Angeles, California after the police beating of Rodney King; El Al Flight 1862 crashes into a residential apartment building in Amsterdam after two of its engin ...
qualifications included seven groups, the winners of which would join the hosts in the finals, although in 1992 one winner was eventually banned from appearing and was replaced by the runner-up of its group. From 1996, a 16-team format was employed for the main tournament. Runners-up in qualifying groups now could also gain access to the finals. Play-off pairings were introduced as a second opportunity for teams that narrowly miss out direct qualification. The
1996 File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 800, causing the plane to crash and killing everyone o ...
qualifying consisted of eight groups; the group winners as well as the six best runners-up qualified, and so did the winner of the play-off between the remaining two runners-up, joining the host country. In 2000, the first-placed teams in the nine qualifying groups as well as the best runner-up progressed directly to the finals, while another four spots were taken by winners of play-offs contested by the remaining runners-up. For the first time there were two host countries; they both received automatic berths in the finals. In
2004 2004 was designated as an International Year of Rice by the United Nations, and the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and its Abolition (by UNESCO). Events January * January 3 – Flash Airlines Flight ...
, along with the host team, the ten qualifying group winners advanced, as did the winners of the five play-off ties formed by the runners-up. In
2008 File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; ...
, the top two teams from each of the seven qualifying groups joined the two host teams to bring the number of finalists to 16. No play-off stage was held. The
2012 File:2012 Events Collage V3.png, From left, clockwise: The passenger cruise ship Costa Concordia lies capsized after the Costa Concordia disaster; Damage to Casino Pier in Seaside Heights, New Jersey as a result of Hurricane Sandy; People gat ...
qualification replicated the format of that of 2000: places were taken by nine group winners and the best runner-up, while the other runners-up determined four more finalists via play-offs, with automatic berths being guaranteed to the two host countries. Starting from 2016, the finals format was expanded again, now featuring 24 teams. It became possible for third-placed teams in qualifying groups to get to the Euros too. The 2016 qualifying included nine groups; the winners, the runners-up, and the best third-placed team advanced directly, while play-offs played by the other third-placed teams determined the last four finalists. The host nation still qualified automatically. The 2016 qualification tournament was the first one to be branded as the European Qualifiers, a trademark used from that point on for both the European Championship qualifications and the FIFA World Cup qualification tournaments in Europe. From 2020, qualification began to be linked with the newly created
UEFA Nations League The UEFA Nations League is a biennial international football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the member associations of UEFA, the sport's European governing body. The first tournament began in September 2018. The ...
: participation in the qualifying play-offs was now determined based on the teams' performances in that competition and not in qualification itself. The play-offs themselves were restructured into four-team brackets consisting of semi-finals and a final. In the 2020 qualifying, the top two teams of the ten qualifying groups took twenty places in the main tournament. From each of the four divisions of the 2018–19 Nations League, the four best-ranked teams not already qualified for Euro 2020 filled in a play-off bracket for that division, and the winner of each bracket got a spot in the Euros too. There were no automatic berths for Euro 2020 as it was hosted by multiple cities across the continent. It was actually postponed to 2021 due to the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...
but retained its original branding. In a similar fashion, the 2024 qualifying granted spots to the winners and runners-up of the ten qualifying groups, while this time only the top three divisions of the 2022–23 Nations League formed play-off brackets to determine three more finalists, and the host country got an automatic spot.


Participating teams

All national teams that are members of
UEFA Union of European Football Associations (UEFA ; french: Union des associations européennes de football; german: Union der europäischen Fußballverbände) is one of six continental bodies of governance in association football. It governs fo ...
are eligible to enter the qualification for the European Championship. A total of 56 distinct entities have made attempts to qualify for the European Championship. Of those, 55 are still active in the competition. Due to political changes, a few of the entities have appeared under multiple incarnations (see the footnotes to the below table), and the
East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In t ...
team is now defunct.
Saarland The Saarland (, ; french: Sarre ) is a state of Germany in the south west of the country. With an area of and population of 990,509 in 2018, it is the smallest German state in area apart from the city-states of Berlin, Bremen, and Hamburg, a ...
, a former UEFA member, merged into
West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 ...
in 1957 and therefore did not enter the qualifiers of any European Championships. ;Successor teams inheriting the records of former teams ( as considered by UEFA and FIFA) ;Teams competing as parts of other teams ;Renamed teams


Overview

Key * = successful qualifying campaign * = did not take part in qualifying * = participated in the final tournament


Team records

The below table compares the overall records of all teams that have participated in qualification. Teams are ordered by points using the
three points for a win Three points for a win is a standard used in many sports leagues and group tournaments, especially in association football, in which three points are awarded to the team winning a match, with no points awarded to the losing team. If the game is ...
system, then by goal difference, and then by goals scored. Note that this order does not represent any official rankings, and qualification tournaments are not direct competitions between all teams. The "Qualifying attempts" column only counts qualifying campaigns where the team played at least one match, while the "Appearances in the finals" also include automatic qualifiers. As per statistical convention in football, matches decided in
extra time Overtime or extra time is an additional period of play specified under the rules of a sport to bring a game to a decision and avoid declaring the match a tie or draw where the scores are the same. In some sports, this extra period is played only ...
are counted as wins and losses, while matches decided by penalty shoot-outs are counted as draws. The table is accurate as of
UEFA Euro 2020 The 2020 UEFA European Football Championship, commonly referred to as UEFA Euro 2020 (stylised as UEFA EURO 2020) or simply Euro 2020, was the 16th UEFA European Championship, the quadrennial international men's football championship of Europ ...
. Notes on the table: * The 1992 qualifying attempt is treated as successful for Yugoslavia and unsuccessful for Denmark, even though Yugoslavia did not appear in the 1992 finals while Denmark did. * The Austria vs Greece match (1968 qualifying), which was declared void, is not taken into account. * For the following matches, which were annulled and then replayed, only the replays are counted: Netherlands vs Cyprus (1988 qualifying) and Georgia vs Russia (2004 qualifying). * For the following matches, where the scorelines were awarded, the awarded scorelines, rather than the original ones, are taken into account: Denmark vs Sweden (2008 qualifying), Italy vs Serbia (2012 qualifying), Serbia vs Albania (2016 qualifying), and Montenegro vs Russia (2016 qualifying). * In the 2016 qualifying, Serbia was deducted 3 points and Croatia was deducted 1 point, which is reflected in the table.


Notes


References


External links


European Championship
RSSSF The Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation (RSSSF) is an international organization dedicated to collecting statistics about association football. The foundation aims to build an exhaustive archive of football-related information from around the ...


See also

* National team appearances in the UEFA European Championship *
FIFA World Cup qualification The FIFA World Cup qualification is a competitive match that a national association football team takes in order to qualify for one of the available berths at the final tournament of the (men's) FIFA World Cup. Qualifying tournaments are hel ...
* AFC Asian Cup qualification * CONCACAF Gold Cup qualification {{UEFA European Football Championship qualifying