All eyes will soon be on the road to the 2024 Uefa European Championships.
Germany will become a two-time Euros hosts, having staged the competition in 1988. A qualifying tournament played from March 2023 to March 2024 determines which 23 teams join them.
Here’s everything you need to know about the upcoming draw.
When is the Euro 2024 draw?
The draw for the Euro 2024 qualifying group stage will take place at the Festhalle exhibition centre in Frankfurt on 9 October 2022. It will begin at 11am UK time.
Euro 2024 live streaming options and how to watch online:
The Euro 2024 qualifying group stage draw will be live streamed on the official UEFA website and their Youtube channel.
The Euro 2024 pots:
A total of 53 Uefa member associations will enter the qualifying process. Russia will not be part of the qualifying draw because of the country’s invasion of Ukraine.
Seeding pots for the draw
| Pot | Teams |
| *UNL | Netherlands, Croatia, Spain, Italy |
| 1 | Denmark, Portugal, Belgium, Hungary, Switzerland, Poland |
| 2 | France, Austria, Czech Republic, England, Wales, Israel, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Scotland, Finland |
| 3 | Ukraine, Iceland, Norway, Slovenia, Republic of Ireland, Albania, Montenegro, Romania, Sweden, Armenia |
| 4 | Georgia, Greece, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Luxembourg, Azerbaijan, Kosovo, Bulgaria, Faroe Islands, North Macedonia |
| 5 | Slovakia, Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Belarus, Lithuania, Gibraltar, Estonia, Latvia, Moldova, Malta |
| 6 | Andorra, San Marino, Liechtenstein |
*UNL = Uefa Nations League
The 53 teams involved are divided into seven pots: the ‘UNL’ pot, which contains the four Nations League finalists — Netherlands, Croatia, Spain and Italy — followed by Pot 1 to Pot 6. Pot 1 contains six teams, Pots 2 to 5 each contain ten teams and Pot 6 contains the three remaining teams. Former champions France and England will be in Pot 2 alongside Wales and Scotland.
Group stage matches will take place from 23 March to 21 November 2023. The ten group winners and the ten group runners-up qualify for the final tournament. The remaining three spots will be decided via the play-offs, which will be held in March 2024.
What is the draw procedure?
The 53 Uefa national teams will be seeded into six pots based on the 2022/23 Uefa Nations League overall ranking. The four 2023 Uefa Nations League Finals participants will be placed into the UNL Pot and drawn into Groups A–D, which only have five teams, meaning they will only have to play eight qualifying matches, leaving two free matchdays to play in Finals in June 2023.
The next six-highest nations will then be placed into Pot 1. If Germany had won their Nations League group, the UNL Pot would have contained one team fewer and Pot 1 would have instead featured seven teams. Pots 2 to 5 will contain ten nations, while Pot 6 will include the three lowest-ranked countries. The teams will be drawn into ten groups: seven groups of five teams (Groups A–G) and three groups of six teams (Groups H–J).
The draw will start with the UNL Pot and Pot 1, and continues from Pot 2 to Pot 6, from which a team will be drawn and assigned to the first available group (based on draw conditions) in alphabetical order.
For political reasons, matches between following pairs of teams are considered prohibited clashes, which means they cannot drawn into the same group:
- Armenia and Azerbaijan
- Belarus and Ukraine
- Gibraltar and Spain
- Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Kosovo and Serbia.
A maximum of two teams whose venues were identified as having high or medium risk of severe winter conditions can be placed in each group: Belarus, Estonia, Faroe Islands, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway.
The two “hard winter venues” (Faroe Islands and Iceland) are normally unable to host games in March or November; the others will play as few home matches as possible in March and November.
A maximum of one pair of teams identified with excessive travel distance in relation to other countries can be placed in each group:
- Azerbaijan: with Gibraltar, Iceland, Portugal.
- Iceland: with Cyprus, Georgia, Israel.
- Kazakhstan: with Andorra, England, France, Gibraltar, Iceland, Malta, Northern Ireland, Portugal, Republic of Ireland, Scotland, Spain, Wales.
What are England’s best- and worst-case scenarios for the Euro 2024 draw?
- READ MORE: England odds to win World Cup 2022 – predicted squads, route to the final, ranking & form
Based on Fifa world rankings — along with the draw procedure and restrictions — the toughest group England could draw is:
- Belgium, England, Sweden, Turkey, Slovakia, Andorra
Or, if fewer games creates a greater risk of failure to qualify,
- Spain, England, Sweden, Turkey, Slovakia
The best-case scenario would look something like…
- Croatia, England, Armenia, Faroe Islands, Gibraltar
Or if the Three Lions aren’t drawn with a UNL team…
- Hungary, England, Armenia, Faroe Islands, Gibraltar, San Marino