UEFA Euro 2016

The 2016 UEFA European Championship, commonly referred to as Euro 2016, will be the 15th European Championship for men's national football teams organised by UEFA. It will be held in France from 10 June to 10 July 2016.

For the first time, the European Championship final tournament will be contested by 24 teams, having been expanded from the 16-team format that had been used since 1996. Under this new format, the finalists will contest a group stage consisting of six groups of four teams, followed by a knockout stage including three rounds and the final. As hosts, France have automatically qualified for the final tournament, while the other 53 national teams will compete in a qualifying competition, running from September 2014 to November 2015, to secure the remaining 23 places. Among these teams are back-to-back defending champions Spain, and for the first time since their affiliation with UEFA, Gibraltar.

France was chosen as the host 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 will be played in ten stadia in nine cities: Bordeaux, Lens, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Nice, Paris, St-Etienne and Toulouse. It will be the third time that France hosts the tournament, after the inaugural edition in 1960 and the 1984 finals. The French team have won the European Championship two times: in 1984 and 2000.

The winners will earn the right to participate in the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup hosted by Russia.

Bid process
Four bids came before the deadline at 9 March 2009 which were France, Italy and Turkey as single bids each, plus Norway and Sweden as a joint bid. Norway and Sweden eventually withdrew their bid in December 2009.

The host was selected on 28 May 2010.


 * Voting results

Qualification
The qualifying draw took place at the Palais des Congres Acropolis in Nice, on 23 February 2014, with the first matches being played in September 2014.

A total of 53 teams competed for 23 places in the final tournament to join France, who have 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 to the final tournament. The remaining eight third-placed teams will contest 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 ever full strategy meeting, Michel Platini proposed a qualification format involving two group stages, but the proposal was not accepted by the member associations. 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. 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.

Five teams secured their first-ever qualification to a UEFA European Championship final tournament: Albania, Iceland, Northern Ireland, Slovakia and Wales. Northern Ireland, Slovakia and Wales had each previously competed in the FIFA World Cup, while Albania and Iceland had never participated in a major tournament in their history. 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 2004 champions Greece finished bottom in their group. Two other previous Euro champions, 1988 winners Netherlands and 1992 victors Denmark, both missed out on the finals, the Netherlands for the first time since Euro 1984 (also held in France), and missing out on their first major tournament since the 2002 FIFA World Cup as well as their failure to qualify being only 16 months after the team finished third in the 2014 FIFA World Cup and Denmark for the first time since Euro 2008, after losing in the play-off rounds to Sweden.

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.

Venues
Initially, twelve stadia 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 choose which nine stadia would actually be used. The choice for the first seven was undisputed – France's national stadium, the Stade de France, four newly constructed stadia in Lille, Lyon, Nice and Bordeaux, and those of the biggest cities, Paris and Marseille. The last two remaining places, after Strasbourg opted out for financial reasons following relegation, were chosen to be Lens and Nancy in the first round of voting, instead of Saint-Étienne and Toulouse, chosen as reserve stadia. In June 2011, the number of host venues was increased to eleven because of the new tournament format which sees 24 teams taking part, instead of just 16. The decision means that the reserve cities of Toulouse and St-Étienne joined the list of hosts. However, in December 2011, Nancy announced its withdrawal from the tournament, after the stadium's renovation fell through, so ten host cities will now be used. Nantes and Montpellier, stadia used for the 1998 World Cup, were also not chosen. The final list of the ten venues was confirmed by the UEFA Executive Committee on 25 January 2013.

Team base camps
Each team has a "team base camp" for its stay between the matches. The teams will train and reside 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:

Draw ceremonies
The qualifying draw took place at the Palais des Congres Acropolis in Nice on 23 February 2014. The draw for the finals took place at the Palais des Congrès de la Porte Maillot in Paris on 11 December 2015.

Logo and slogan
The official logo was unveiled on 26 June 2013, during a ceremony at the Pavillon Cambon Capucines in Paris. Conceived by Portuguese agency Brandia Central, which also created the visual identity for the previous European Championship, the design is based on the theme "Celebrating the art of football". The logo depicts the Henri Delaunay trophy with the blue, white and red colours of the French flag, surrounded by a mixture of shapes and lines representing different artistic movements and football elements.

On 17 October 2013, UEFA announced the official slogan of the tournament: Le Rendez-Vous. Asked about its meaning, Jacques Lambert, chairman of the Euro 2016 organising committee, told that the slogan "is much more than a reminder of dates (...) and venues". He further explained that "UEFA is sending out an invitation to football fans throughout the world and to lovers of major events, an invitation to meet up and share the emotions of an elite-level tournament."

Broadcasting
The International Broadcast Centre (IBC) will be located at the Parc des Expositions at la Porte de Versailles in Paris.

Sponsorship
Global sponsors
 * Carlsberg
 * Coca-Cola
 * Continental
 * Kia
 * McDonald's
 * SOCAR

Finals format
To accommodate the expansion from a 16 team finals tournament to 24 teams, the format will be changed from that used in 2012 with the addition of two extra groups in the group stage, and an extra round in the knockout stages. The six groups (A to F) would still contain 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 would also progress, leaving 16 teams going into the new round of 16 knockout stage, ahead of the usual quarter-finals, semi-finals and final, and only 8 teams going out at the group stage.

This format generates a total of 51 games, compared with 31 games for the previous 16-team tournament, to be played over a period of 31 days. UEFA's general secretary Gianni Infantino previously described the format as "not ideal" due to the need for third place group stage winners, leading to a difficulty in preventing situations where teams might be able to know in advance what results they need to progress out of the group, lending to a lack of suspense for fans, or even the prospect of mutually beneficial collusion between teams.

If two or more teams are equal on points on completion of the group matches, the following tie-breaking criteria will be applied: The four best third-placed teams are determined according to the following criteria:
 * Tie-breaking
 * 1) Higher number of points obtained in the matches played between the teams in question;
 * 2) Superior goal difference resulting from the matches played between the teams in question;
 * 3) Higher number of goals scored in the matches played between the teams in question;
 * If, after having applied criteria 1 to 3, teams still have an equal ranking, criteria 1 to 3 are reapplied exclusively to the matches between the teams in question to determine their final rankings. If this procedure does not lead to a decision, criteria 5 to 9 apply;
 * 1) Superior goal difference in all group matches;
 * 2) Higher number of goals scored in all group matches;
 * 3) If only two teams have the same number of points, and they are tied according to criteria 1–6 after having met in the last round of the group stage, their ranking is determined by a penalty shoot-out (this criteria is not used if more than two teams have the same number of points).
 * 4) Fair play conduct (1 point for a single yellow card, 3 points for a red card as a consequence of two yellow cards, 3 points for a direct red card, 4 points for a yellow card followed by a direct red card);
 * 5) Position in the UEFA national team coefficient ranking system.
 * 1) Higher number of points obtained;
 * 2) Superior goal difference;
 * 3) Higher number of goals scored;
 * 4) Fair play conduct;
 * 5) Position in the UEFA national team coefficient ranking system.

In the round of 16, UEFA have arranged the match-ups to take place as follows:
 * Play-off round structure
 * Match 1: Runner-up Group A v Runner-up Group C
 * Match 2: Winner Group D v 3rd Place Group B/E/F
 * Match 3: Winner Group B v 3rd Place Group A/C/D
 * Match 4: Winner Group F v Runner-up Group E
 * Match 5: Winner Group C v 3rd Place Group A/B/F
 * Match 6: Winner Group E v Runner-up Group D
 * Match 7: Winner Group A v 3rd Place Group C/D/E
 * Match 8: Runner-up Group B v Runner-up Group F

The specific match-ups involving the third-placed teams depend on which four third-placed teams qualify for the round of 16:

The quarter-final match-ups are:
 * Quarter-final 1: Winner Match 1 v Winner Match 2
 * Quarter-final 2: Winner Match 3 v Winner Match 4
 * Quarter-final 3: Winner Match 5 v Winner Match 6
 * Quarter-final 4: Winner Match 7 v Winner Match 8

The semifinal match-ups are:
 * Semi-final 1: Winner Quarter-final 1 v Winner Quarter-final 2
 * Semi-final 2: Winner Quarter-final 3 v Winner Quarter-final 4

The final match-up is: Winner Semi-final 1 v Winner Semi-final 2. Same as every tournament since UEFA Euro 1984, there is no third-place match.

Squads
Each national team have to submit a squad of 23 players, three of whom must be goalkeepers, at least ten days before the opening match of the tournament. 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.

Match officials
On 15 December 2015, UEFA named eighteen referees for Euro 2016. The full referee teams were announced on 1 March 2016.

Hungarian referee Viktor Kassai was chosen to officiate the opener between France and Romania.

Two match officials, who serve only as fourth officials, and two reserve assistant referees were also named:

Group stage
UEFA announced the schedule of the tournament on 25 April 2014. All times are local, CEST (UTC+2).

Group winners, runners-up, and best four third-placed teams advance to the Round of 16.

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

Logo and slogan
The official logo was unveiled on 26 June 2013, during a ceremony at the Pavillon Cambon Capucines in Paris. Conceived by Portuguese agency Brandia Central, which also created the visual identity for the previous European Championship, the design is based on the theme "Celebrating the art of football". The logo depicts the Henri Delaunay trophy with the blue, white and red colours of the French flag, surrounded by a mixture of shapes and lines representing different artistic movements and football elements.

On 17 October 2013, UEFA announced the official slogan of the tournament: Le Rendez-Vous. Asked about its meaning, Jacques Lambert, chairman of the Euro 2016 organising committee, told that the slogan "is much more than a reminder of dates (...) and venues". He further explained that "UEFA is sending out an invitation to football fans throughout the world and to lovers of major events, an invitation to meet up and share the emotions of an elite-level tournament."

Video game
The UEFA Euro 2016 video game will be released by Konami as a free DLC on "Pro Evolution Soccer 2016".

Mascot
The official mascot of the tournament, a half child and half superhero, was unveiled on 18 November 2014. The name of the mascot, "Super Victor", was chosen by the public over two other options, "Driblou" and "Goalix".

Match ball
The official match ball, Beau Jeu, was unveiled on 12 November 2015 by former France player Zinedine Zidane.