2021 UEFA European Under-21 Championship


The 2021 UEFA European Under-21 Championship will be the 23rd edition of the UEFA European Under-21 Championship, the biennial international youth football championship organised by UEFA for the men's under-21 national teams of Europe. The tournament will be co-hosted by Hungary and Slovenia and was scheduled to take place from 9 to 26 June 2021. However, the tournament was rescheduled following the postponement of UEFA Euro 2020 to June/July 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the new dates to be decided initially on 27 May 2020, but then postponed to 17 June 2020, where the UEFA Executive Committee meeting discussed the calendar and format of the tournament. On 17 June 2020, UEFA announced the tournament would be played in two stages; the group stage, which would take place from 24 to 31 March 2021, and the knockout stage, which would take place from 31 May to 6 June 2021.
Initially, 12 teams were to play in the tournament, however on 6 February 2019, UEFA's Executive Committee increased this number to 16. Only players born on or after 1 January 1998 are eligible to participate.
Spain are the defending champions.

Host selection

The following associations indicated their interests to bid for the tournament:
Hungary and Slovenia were appointed as co-hosts at the UEFA Executive Committee meeting in Dublin, Republic of Ireland on 3 December 2018.

Qualification

All 55 UEFA nations entered the competition, and with the co-hosts Hungary and Slovenia qualifying automatically, the other 53 teams will compete in the qualifying competition to determine the remaining 14 spots in the final tournament. The qualifying competition consists of two rounds:
The draw for the qualifying group stage will be held on 11 December 2018. The qualifying group stage will take place from March 2019 to October 2020, while the play-offs will take place in November 2020.

Qualified teams

The following teams qualified for the final tournament.
Note: All appearance statistics include only U-21 era.
TeamMethod of qualificationDate of qualificationAppearanceLast appearancePrevious best performance
3 12 20185th1996
3 12 20181st—Debut

Final draw

The final draw will be held in late 2020. The 16 teams will be drawn into four groups of four teams. The two hosts will be assigned to positions A1 and B1 in the draw, while the other teams will be seeded according to their coefficient ranking following the end of the qualifying stage, calculated based on the following:
The Hungarian Football Federation proposed the following venues:
The Slovenian Football Association proposed the following venues:
The provisional schedule was announced on 6 November 2019.

Squads

Each national team have to submit a squad of 23 players, three of whom must be goalkeepers. If a player is injured or ill severely enough to prevent his participation in the tournament before his team's first match, he can be replaced by another player.

Group stage

The group winners and runners-up advance to the quarter-finals.
;Tiebreakers
In the group stage, teams are ranked according to points, and if tied on points, the following tiebreaking criteria are applied, in the order given, to determine the rankings :
  1. Points in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
  2. Goal difference in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
  3. Goals scored in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
  4. If more than two teams are tied, and after applying all head-to-head criteria above, a subset of teams are still tied, all head-to-head criteria above are reapplied exclusively to this subset of teams;
  5. Goal difference in all group matches;
  6. Goals scored in all group matches;
  7. Penalty shoot-out if only two teams have the same number of points, and they met in the last round of the group and are tied after applying all criteria above ;
  8. Disciplinary points ;
  9. UEFA coefficient ranking for the final draw.
All times are local, CEST.

Group A



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Group B



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Group C



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Group D



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Knockout stage

In the knockout stage, extra time and penalty shoot-out are used to decide the winner if necessary.

Bracket

Quarter-finals

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Semi-finals

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Final

Broadcasting

Europe

Outside Europe

TBA