UEFA Euro 2024 Qualification

The **UEFA Euro 2024 qualifying** tournament is a football competition that is being played from March 2023 to March 2024 to determine the 23 UEFA member men's national teams that will join the automatically qualified host team Turkey in the UEFA Euro 2024 final tournament. The competition is linked with the 2022–23 UEFA Nations League, which gives countries a secondary route to qualify for the final tournament.

A total of 54 UEFA member associations entered the qualifying process. The draw for the qualifying group stage took place at the Festhalle in Frankfurt on 9 October 2022.

Vatican City made their qualifying debut.

## Format

The format is similar to the UEFA Euro 2020 qualifying competition: the group stage decides 20 of the 23 teams that will advance to the final tournament to join hosts Turkey. The 54 UEFA member associations were divided into ten groups, with six groups containing four teams and three containing six teams. The draw for the qualifying group stage took place on 9 October 2022, after conclusion of the league phase of the 2022–23 UEFA Nations League. The four UEFA Nations League Finals participants were drawn into groups of five teams (so they are able to compete in the Nations League Finals in June 2023). The qualifying group stage is being played in a home-and-away, round-robin format on double matchdays in March, June, September, October, and November 2023. The winners and runners-up from the ten groups will qualify directly to the final tournament.

Following the qualifying group stage, the remaining three teams will be decided through the play-offs, to be held in March 2024. Twelve teams will be selected based on their performance in the 2022–23 UEFA Nations League. These teams will be divided into three paths, each containing four teams, with one team from each path qualifying for the final tournament. The group winners of Nations Leagues A, B, and C will automatically qualify for the play-off path of their league unless they have qualified for the final tournament via the qualifying group stage. If a group winner has already qualified through the qualifying group stage, they will be replaced by the next best-ranked team in the same league. However, if there are not enough non-qualified teams in the same league, then the spot will go first to the best-ranked group winner of League D, unless that team has already qualified for the final tournament. The remaining slots are then allocated to next best team in the Nations League overall ranking. However, group winners of Leagues B and C cannot face teams from a higher league.

The three play-off paths will each feature two single-leg semi-finals, and one single-leg final. In the semi-finals, the best-ranked team will host the lowest-ranked team, and the second-ranked team will host the third-ranked team. The host of the final will be drawn between the winners of the semi-final pairings. The three play-off path winners will join the twenty teams that already qualified for the final tournament through the group stage.

## Draw

The qualifying group stage draw was held on 9 October 2022, 12:00 CEST, at the Halic Congress Center in Istanbul, Turkey. Of UEFA's 56 member associations, 54 will compete in the qualifying competition. Host team Germany qualified directly to the final tournament, while it was confirmed on 20 September 2022 that Russia were ineligible due to the suspension from FIFA and UEFA competitions following their country's invasion of Ukraine.

The 54 UEFA national teams were seeded into six pots based on the 2022–23 UEFA Nations League overall ranking following the conclusion of the league phase. The four participants of the 2023 UEFA Nations League Finals were placed into the UNL Pot and drawn into Groups A–D, which only have five teams, so that they only have to play eight qualifying matches, leaving two free matchdays to play in the Nations League Finals in June 2023. The next six-highest teams were then placed into Pot 1. If Germany had won their Nations League group, the UNL Pot would have contained three teams, and Pot 1 would have instead contained seven teams. Pots 2 to 5 contained ten teams, while Pot 6 contained the three lowest-ranked teams. The teams were drawn into ten groups: seven groups of five teams (Groups A–G) and three groups of six teams (Groups H–J). The draw started with the UNL Pot and Pot 1, and continued from Pot 2 to Pot 6, from where a team was drawn and assigned to the first available group (based on draw conditions) in alphabetical order.

The following restrictions were applied with computer assistance:

* **Prohibited clashes:** For political reasons, matches between the following pairs of teams were considered prohibited clashes, unable to be drawn into the same group: Armenia / Azerbaijan, Belarus / Ukraine, Gibraltar / Spain, Kosovo / Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo / Serbia.
* **Winter venues:** A maximum of two teams whose venues were identified as having high or medium risk of severe winter conditions could be placed in each group: Belarus, Estonia, Faroe Islands, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway.
* **Excessive travel:** A maximum of one pair of teams identified with excessive travel distance in relation to other countries could be placed in each group:
	+ Azerbaijan: with Gibraltar, Iceland, Portugal.
	+ Iceland: with Armenia, Cyprus, Georgia, Israel
	+ Kazakhstan: with Andorra, England, Faroe Islands, France, Gibraltar, Iceland, Malta, Northern Ireland, Portugal, Republic of Ireland, Scotland, Spain, Wales.

## Groups

For All Groups here is the key:

X - Guarenteed at least Playoffs

Q - Qualified for UEFA Euro 2024

## Play-Offs

Teams that fail in the qualifying group stage can still qualify for the final tournament through the play-offs. Leagues A, B, and C in the UEFA Nations League will be allocated one of the three remaining final tournament spots. Four teams from each league that have not already qualified for the European Championship finals will compete in the play-offs of their league. The play-off berths were first allocated to each Nations League group winner, and if any of the group winners already qualify for the European Championship finals, then to the next-best ranked team of the league.

## References

1. ↑ UEFA Euro 2024: The Qualifiers are here
2. ↑ UEFA Euro 2024 Qualifying Draw: Heres what to look forward to
3. ↑ UEFA Euro 2024: Vatican City's first qualifying campaign to be in Road to Turkey's qualifiers
4. ↑ UEFA Euro 2024 Qualifiers: The Complete Schedule
5. ↑ If a team already has qualified for the UEFA Euros or FIFA World Cup and won their Nations League Group, where does their spot go to?
6. ↑ UEFA Euro 2024: Play-Off format the same as UEFA Euro 2020 but with one less path
7. ↑ Russia suspended from UEFA Euro 2024 qualifying
8. ↑ UEFA Euro 2024 Qualifiers: The procedure for tomorrows draw in Istanbul