The 2016 UEFA European Football Championship, commonly referred to as UEFA Euro 2016 or simply Euro 2016, was the 15th UEFA European Championship, the quadrennial international men's football championship of Europe organised by UEFA. It was held in France from 10 June to 10 July 2016. Spain were the two-time defending champions, having won the 2008 and 2012 tournaments, but were eliminated in the round of 16 by Italy. Portugal won the tournament for the first time, following a 1–0 victory after extra time over the host team, France, in the final played at the Stade de France.
For the first time, the European Championship final tournament was contested by 24 teams, having been expanded from the 16-team format used since 1996. Under the new format, the finalists contested a group stage consisting of six groups of four teams, followed by a knockout stage including three rounds and the final. Nineteen teams – the top two from each of the nine qualifying groups and the best third-placed team – joined France in the final tournament, who qualified automatically as host; a series of two-legged play-off ties between the remaining third-placed teams in November 2015 decided the last four finalist spots.
France was chosen as the host nation on 28 May 2010, after a bidding process in which they beat Italy and Turkey for the right to host the 2016 finals. The matches were played in ten stadiums in ten cities: Bordeaux, Lens, Villeneuve-d'Ascq, Décines-Charpieu, Marseille, Nice, Paris, Saint-Denis, Saint-Étienne, and Toulouse. It was the third time that France hosted the finals, after the inaugural tournament in 1960 and the 1984 finals.
As the winners, Portugal earned the right to compete at the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup in Russia.
Bid process
Four bids came before the deadline on 9 March 2009. France, Italy and Turkey put in single bids while Norway and Sweden put in a joint bid. Norway and Sweden eventually withdrew their bid in December 2009.
The host was selected on 28 May 2010. +Voting results Country Round 1st (points) 2nd (votes) 43 7 38 6 23–Total 104 13 Round 1: Each of the thirteen members of the UEFA Executive Committee ranked the 3 bids first, second, and third. First place ranking received 5 points, second place 2 points, and third place 1 point. Executive members from the countries bidding were not allowed to vote. Round 2: The same thirteen-member committee voted for either of the two finalists.
Qualification
The qualifying draw took place at the Palais des Congrès Acropolis in Nice, on 23 February 2014, with the first matches being played in September 2014.
53 teams competed for 23 places in the final tournament to join France, who automatically qualified as hosts. Gibraltar competed in a European Championship qualifying for the first time since their affiliation to UEFA in 2013. The seeding pots were formed on the basis of the UEFA national team coefficients, with the Euro 2012 champions Spain and hosts France automatically top seeded.
The 53 national sides were drawn into eight groups of six teams and one group of five teams. The group winners, runners-up, and the best third-placed team (with the results against the sixth-placed team discarded) qualify directly for the final tournament. The remaining eight third-placed teams contested two-legged play-offs to determine the last four qualifiers.
In March 2012, Gianni Infantino, the UEFA general secretary at the time, stated that UEFA would review the qualification competition to ensure that it was not "boring". In September 2011, during UEFA's first full strategy meeting, Michel Platini proposed a qualification format involving two group stages, but the member associations did not accept the proposal. In May 2013, Platini confirmed a similar qualifying format would be again discussed during the September 2013 UEFA executive committee meeting in Dubrovnik.
Qualified teams Thirteen of the sixteen teams (including hosts France) that qualified for Euro 2012 qualified again for the 2016 final tournament. Among them were England, who became only the sixth team to record a flawless qualifying campaign (10 wins in 10 matches), defending European champions Spain, and world champions Germany, who qualified for their 12th straight European Championship finals.
Romania, Turkey, Austria, and Switzerland all returned after missing out in 2012, with the Austrians qualifying for just their second final Euro tournament, after having co-hosted Euro 2008 and first time through qualifying. Returning to the final tournament after long absences were Belgium for the first time since co-hosting Euro 2000, and Hungary for the first time in 44 years, having last appeared at Euro 1972, and 30 years since appearing in a major tournament, their previous one being the 1986 FIFA World Cup.
Four teams secured their first qualification to a UEFA European Championship final tournament: Albania, Iceland, Northern Ireland, and Wales. Northern Ireland and Wales had each previously competed in the FIFA World Cup, while Albania and Iceland had never participated in a major tournament. Slovakia meanwhile are making the first tournament as an independent nation, having qualified for three Euro tournaments and eight World Cups under Czechoslovakia. Similarly, both Austria and Ukraine completed successful qualification campaigns for the first time, having only previously qualified as hosts (of 2008 and 2012 respectively).
Scotland were the only team from the British Isles not to qualify for the finals, and it also marked the first time that both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland qualified for the same major tournament finals. Greece, champions in 2004, finished bottom in their group and failed to qualify for the first time since 2000. Two other previous champions, the Netherlands (1988) and Denmark (1992), missed out on the finals. The Dutch team failed to qualify for the first time since Euro 1984 (also held in France), missing out on their first major tournament since the 2002 FIFA World Cup and only 16 months after having finished third at the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Denmark did not appear at the Euro finals for the first time since 2008, after losing in the play-off round against Sweden.
As of 2024, this was the last time that Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland qualified for either the World Cup or European Championship finals, the only time that Iceland qualified, as well as the last time that Denmark, the Netherlands and Scotland failed to qualify.
Final draw The draw for the finals took place at the Palais des Congrès de la Porte Maillot in Paris on 12 December 2015, 18:00 CET. The 24 qualified teams were drawn into six groups of four teams, with the hosts France being automatically placed in position A1. The remaining teams were seeded into four pots of five (Pot 1) or six teams (Pots 2, 3, and 4). As the title holders, Spain were seeded in Pot 1, while the other 22 teams were seeded according to the UEFA national team coefficients updated after the completion of the qualifying group stage (excluding the play-offs), which were released by UEFA on 14 October 2015.
+ Pot 1Team 37,962 2 40,236 1 35,963 3 35,138 4 34,442 5+ Pot 2Team 34,345 6 31,345 9 31,254 10 30,932 11 30,642 12 30,313 14+ Pot 3Team 29,403 15 29,028 16 28,306 17 28,038 18 27,171 19 27,142 20+ Pot 4Team 27,033 22 26,902 23 25,388 27 24,531 28 23,216 31 22,961 33
Teams were drawn consecutively into Group A to F. First, the Pot 1 teams were assigned to the first positions of their groups, while next the positions of all other teams were drawn separately from Pot 4 to 2 (for the purposes of determining the match schedules in each group).
The draw resulted in the following groups:
+ Group ATeam + Group BTeam + Group CTeam + Group DTeam + Group ETeam + Group FTeam
Venues Ten stadiums were used for the competition. Initially, twelve stadiums were presented for the French bid, chosen on 28 May 2010. These venues were to be whittled down to nine by the end of May 2011, but it was suggested in June 2011 that eleven venues might be used. The French Football Federation had to decide which nine would be selected.
The choice for the first seven was undisputed – the national Stade de France, four newly constructed ones in Lille Metropole (Villeneuve-d'Ascq), Décines-Charpieu (Lyon Metropolis), Nice and Bordeaux, and two stadiums in the two largest cities, Paris and Marseille. After Strasbourg opted out for financial reasons following relegation, two more venues were selected to be Lens and Nancy, leaving Toulouse and Saint-Étienne as reserve options.
In June 2011, the number of host venues was increased to eleven due to the new tournament format featuring 24 teams, instead of the previous 16. The decision meant that the reserve cities of Toulouse and Saint-Étienne joined the list of hosts. Then, in December 2011, Nancy announced its withdrawal from the tournament, after plans for the stadium's renovation were cancelled, finalising the list of host venues at ten.
Two other possible options, the Stade de la Beaujoire in Nantes and the Stade de la Mosson in Montpellier (venues which were used for the 1998 World Cup) were not chosen. The final list was confirmed by the UEFA Executive Committee on 25 January 2013. Capacity figures are those for matches at UEFA Euro 2016 and are not necessarily the total capacity that the venues are capable of holding.
Saint-Denis(Paris Area) Marseille Décines-Charpieu(Lyon Area) Villeneuve-d'Ascq(Lille Area) Stade de France Stade Vélodrome Parc Olympique Lyonnais Stade Pierre-Mauroy Capacity: 81,338 Capacity: 67,394 Capacity: 59,286 Capacity: 50,186 Paris Bordeaux Parc des Princes Stade de Bordeaux Capacity: 48,712 Capacity: 42,115 Saint-Étienne Lens Nice Toulouse Stade Geoffroy-Guichard Stade Bollaert-Delelis Stade de Nice Stadium de Toulouse Capacity: 41,965 Capacity: 38,223 Capacity: 35,624 Capacity: 33,150
Team base camps Each team had a "team base camp" for its stay between the matches. The teams trained and resided in these locations throughout the tournament, travelling to games staged away from their bases. From an initial list of 66 bases, the 24 participating teams had to confirm their selection with UEFA by 31 January 2016.
The selected team base camps were announced on 2 March 2016:
Team Base camp Albania Perros-Guirec Austria Mallemort Belgium Bordeaux/Le Pian-Médoc Croatia Deauville/Cœur Côte Fleurie Czech Republic Tours England Chantilly France Clairefontaine-en-Yvelines Germany Évian-les-Bains Hungary Tourrettes Iceland Annecy/Annecy-le-Vieux Italy Grammont/Montpellier Northern Ireland Saint-Georges-de-Reneins Poland La Baule-Escoublac Portugal Marcoussis Republic of Ireland Versailles Romania Orry-la-Ville Russia Croissy-sur-Seine Slovakia Vichy Spain Saint-Martin-de-Ré Sweden Saint-Nazaire/Pornichet Switzerland Montpellier/Juvignac Turkey Saint-Cyr-sur-Mer Ukraine Aix-en-Provence Wales Dinard
Finals format To accommodate the expansion from a 16-team finals tournament to 24 teams, the format was changed from the one used in 2012 with the addition of two extra groups in the group stage, and an extra round in the knockout stage. The six groups (A to F) still contained four teams each, with the top two from each group still going through to the knockout stage. In the new format, however, the four best third-ranked sides also progressed, leaving 16 teams going into the new round of 16 knockout stage (ahead of the usual quarter-finals, semi-finals and final), and only eight teams going out after the group stage. The format was the same as the one which was applied to the 1986, 1990, and 1994 FIFA World Cups, except for the absence of a third place play-off.