2021 UEFA European Under-21 Championship qualification

The 2021 UEFA European Under-21 Championship qualifying competition is a men's under-21 football competition that will determine the 14 teams joining the automatically qualified co-hosts Hungary and Slovenia in the 2021 UEFA European Under-21 Championship final tournament.

Apart from Hungary and Slovenia, all remaining 53 UEFA member national teams entered the qualifying competition. Players born on or after 1 January 1998 are eligible to participate.

Format
The qualifying competition consists of two rounds:
 * Qualifying group stage: The 53 teams are drawn into nine groups: eight groups of six teams and one group of five teams. Each group is played in home-and-away round-robin format. The nine group winners and the best runners-up (not counting results against the sixth-placed team) qualify directly for the final tournament, while the remaining eight runners-up advance to the play-offs.
 * Play-offs: The eight teams are drawn into four ties to play home-and-away two-legged matches to determine the last four qualified teams.

Tiebreakers
In the qualifying group stage, teams are ranked according to points (3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, 0 points for a loss), and if tied on points, the following tiebreaking criteria are applied, in the order given, to determine the rankings (Regulations Article 14.01):
 * 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) Away goals scored in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
 * 5) 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;
 * 6) Goal difference in all group matches;
 * 7) Goals scored in all group matches;
 * 8) Away goals scored in all group matches;
 * 9) Wins in all group matches;
 * 10) Away wins in all group matches;
 * 11) Disciplinary points (red card = 3 points, yellow card = 1 point, expulsion for two yellow cards in one match = 3 points);
 * 12) UEFA coefficient for the qualifying group stage draw.

To determine the best runners-up from the qualifying group stage, the results against the teams in sixth place are discarded. The following criteria are applied (Regulations Article 15.02):
 * 1) Points;
 * 2) Goal difference;
 * 3) Goals scored;
 * 4) Away goals scored;
 * 5) Wins;
 * 6) Away wins;
 * 7) Disciplinary points;
 * 8) UEFA coefficient for the qualifying group stage draw.

In the play-offs, the team that scores more goals on aggregate over the two legs qualifies for the final tournament. If the aggregate score is level, the away goals rule is applied, i.e., the team that scores more goals away from home over the two legs advances. If away goals are also equal, extra time is played. The away goals rule is again applied after extra time, i.e., if there are goals scored during extra time and the aggregate score is still level, the visiting team advances by virtue of more away goals scored. If no goals are scored during extra time, the tie is decided by penalty shoot-out (Regulations Article 19.01).

Schedule
The qualifying matches are played on dates that fall within the FIFA International Match Calendar.

Draw
The draw for the qualifying group stage was held on 11 December 2018, 09:00 CET (UTC+1), at the UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland.

The teams were seeded according to their coefficient ranking, calculated based on the following:
 * 2015 UEFA European Under-21 Championship final tournament and qualifying competition (20%)
 * 2017 UEFA European Under-21 Championship final tournament and qualifying competition (40%)
 * 2019 UEFA European Under-21 Championship qualifying competition (40%)

Each group contained one team from each of Pots A–F (Pots A–E for five-team group). For political reasons, Spain and Gibraltar, and Serbia and Kosovo would not be drawn in the same group.


 * Notes
 * Teams marked in bold qualified for the final tournament.

Ranking of second-placed teams
To determine the best second-placed team from the qualifying group stage which advance directly to the final tournament, only the results of the second-placed teams against the first, third, fourth and fifth-placed teams in their group are taken into account, while results against the sixth-placed team in six-team groups are not included. As a result, eight matches played by each second-placed team are counted for the purposes of determining the ranking.

Draw
The draw for the play-offs will be held in October 2020, to decide the matchups and the order of legs.

Matches
The four play-off winners qualify for the final tournament.


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Qualified teams
The following 16 teams qualify for the final tournament.


 * 1 Bold indicates champions for that year. Italic indicates hosts for that year.