UEFA has published the fixture list for the 2028 European Championships in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The finals start in Wales and end in London. There will be no game played in Northern Ireland.
As UEFA announced in the evening at Piccadilly Circus in the British capital, the opening game will be played in Cardiff and both semi-finals and the final will be played at Wembley Stadium in London. The four quarter-final games will be played in Dublin, Glasgow as well as in Cardiff and London/Wembley.
UEFA confirmed three kick-off times for the 24-team, 51-game tournament: 3:00 p.m., 6:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. (both CEST). The exact schedule will be published after the 2027 draw. The lots for the European Championship qualification will be drawn in Belfast on December 6, 2026. The game will be played in 2028 in nine stadiums in eight cities in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland.
The final three games of a European Championship in a stadium last took place in 2021. In the final round, which was postponed by a year due to the corona pandemic, both semi-finals and the final were also held at Wembley Stadium in London. Germany failed in the round of 16 against eventual European runners-up England.
Hosts are not automatically qualified
As with the current UEFA qualification for the 2026 World Cup, 12 qualifying groups will be formed, each with four or five teams. The hosts England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales do not automatically qualify for the final tournament, but also take part in the qualifiers.
The twelve group winners and the eight best runners-up (20 teams in total) qualify directly for the final round. Two starting places are reserved for the two best-placed host nations that did not already qualify as group winners or best runners-up.
The remaining places will be played in play-offs between the remaining group runners-up and the best-placed, not yet qualified group winners of the 2026/27 UEFA Nations League.