Wales will get their final chance of qualifying for Euro 2024 and join England and Scotland at this summer’s tournament in Germany.
Gareth Southgate’s side booked their place by going unbeaten and topping their group, while Steve Clarke led the Scots through an impressive qualification campaign that included a famous 2-0 win over Spain as they finished second in their own group to earn a place among the 24 sides who will vie to be champions of Europe.
Wales meanwhile pushed Turkey and Croatia to an automatic qualification place but ultimately fell four points short, meaning Rob Page will now take them into a play-off campaign. Here’s what you need to know about how it works, when the games will be played and what awaits the victors.
Who’s qualified for Euro 2024 already?
The following 21 sides have already booked their trip to the finals without the need for a play-off campaign:
- Germany (hosts)
- Albania
- Austria
- Belgium
- Croatia
- Czech Republic
- Denmark
- England
- France
- Hungary
- Italy
- Netherlands
- Portugal
- Romania
- Scotland
- Serbia
- Slovakia
- Slovenia
- Spain
- Switzerland
- Turkey
Who’s in the Euro 2024 play-offs?
With those 21 sides already qualified for the group stages at this summer’s 24-side tournament proper, a further 12 sides will compete for the remaining three places.
Performance in Nations League complicates the qualification process massively, and means three countries have missed out in favour of other sides who actually finished below them in their qualification groups – those being, Norway, Sweden and Azerbaijan.
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Greece, Israel and Kazakhstan were all guaranteed at least a play-off place for topping their Nations League groups, and they will now proceed to the play-offs having failed to earn automatic progress via the Euros qualifying rounds.
A further seven other sides were in the same boat but actually did attain progress in the qualifying round: Croatia, Italy, the Netherlands, Scotland, Serbia, Spain and Turkey, if you're curious.
We won’t bore you with all the ins and outs, but the upshot of that is that those seven play-off places have instead been allocated according to Nations League performance. That means they've been taken by Finland, Iceland, Luxembourg, Poland, Ukraine, Wales... and Estonia, despite their having taken just a single point from their eight qualifying games.
How do the Euro play-offs work and what are the fixtures?
The 12 teams have been drawn into three ‘paths’ – as is UEFA’s preferred terminology – which were effectively seeded according to complicated and frankly quite boring rules to do with (you guessed it) Nations League criteria that we will again spare you here.
Each path effectively consists of a pair of one-off play-off semi-finals held at the home of the better-ranking nation on Thursday 21st March, with each pair of winners progressing to face each other in a final a few days later for a place at Euro 2024.
The venue for each of the three finals has been randomly drawn (indicated below). Those games are scheduled for Tuesday 26th March.
The fixtures have come out as follows:
Path A: Poland v Estonia; Wales v Finland (winner hosts final)
Path B: Israel v Iceland; Bosnia and Herzegovina v Ukraine (winner hosts final)
Path C: Georgia v Luxembourg (winner hosts final); Greece v Kazakhstan
So for example, if Wales beat Finland in their one-off semi final, they will then host the winners of Poland v Estonia five days later. Win that game, and they will join England and Scotland at Euro 2024 this summer.
Which groups will the play-off winners go into at Euro 2024?
A place for each path winner was included in the draw back in October, so there is no ambiguity here.
The path A winners (that’s Wales’ track) will go into Group D alongside Austria, France and the Netherlands.
A rather kinder group awaits for the path B winners: they will join Belgium, Slovakia and Romania in Group E.
Finally, the path C winners will go into Group F with the Czech Republic, Portugal and Turkey.
When does Euro 2024 take place?
The tournament will kick off with Germany v Scotland on Friday 14th June, with the group stage concluding on Wednesday 26th June.
The knockout stage will then commence with the first round of 16 games on Saturday 29th June, leading up to the final in Berlin on Sunday 14th July.
