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 53 national sides were drawn into eight groups of six teams and one group of five teams. 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. Gibraltar competed in a European Championship qualifying for the first time since their affiliation to UEFA in 2013. ĥ3 teams competed for 23 places in the final tournament to join France, who automatically qualified as hosts. 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.
It was the third time that France hosted the finals, after the inaugural tournament in 1960 and the 1984 finals.Īs the winners, Portugal earned the right to compete at the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup in Russia. The matches were played in ten stadiums in ten cities: Bordeaux, Lens, Lille Métropole, Décines-Charpieu, Marseille, Nice, Paris, Saint-Denis, Saint-Étienne, and Toulouse.
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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.įrance was chosen as the host nation on, after a bidding process in which they beat Italy and Turkey for the right to host the 2016 finals. Under the new format, the finalists contested a group stage consisting of six groups of four teams, followed by a knockout phase including three rounds and the final. 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.įor the first time, the European Championship final tournament was contested by 24 teams, having been expanded from the 16-team format used since 1996. Spain were the two-time defending champions, having won the 20 tournaments, but were eliminated in the round of 16 by Italy. It was held in France from 10 June to 10 July 2016. The 2016 UEFA European Football Championship, commonly referred to as UEFA Euro 2016 (stylised 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.