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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
Sport
Alex Young

Euro 2028: UK and Ireland to host after Turkey withdraw bid

The UK and Ireland will host Euro 2028, after Turkey this morning withdrew its bid for the tournament.

Turkey has withdrawn to focus on a joint bid with Italy for Euro 2032, leaving the UK and Ireland unopposed to host the 2028 edition.

UEFA will formally announce the hosts for the two tournaments following a meeting of their executive committee in Switzerland next Tuesday.

In April, 10 grounds were selected for the UK and Ireland bid, including Wembley and the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London, Glasgow's Hampden Park, Cardiff's Principality Stadium, Dublin's Aviva Stadium and a new stadium at Casement Park in Belfast.

Manchester City's Etihad Stadium, Newcastle's St James' Park, Aston Villa's Villa Park and Everton's new stadium will also be used.

It is expected that all five host nations — England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic Ireland — will have to play qualifying matches for the tournament, as UEFA rules state that no more than two host nations can be granted automatic qualifying spots for the tournament.

Whether any of the five countries which fails to qualify could then be awarded automatic qualification places remains part of ongoing discussions.

The award of Euro 2028 to the UK and Ireland should now be little more than a formality. Senior UEFA sources have stressed the importance of another tournament following on from Euro 2024 in Germany being held in an established football market to help rebuild the organisation's reserves after the Covid pandemic.

The UK and Ireland had considered a bid to host the 2030 World Cup, but with Spain, Portugal and Morocco the favoured option in Europe for a 2030 bid, the UK and Ireland eventually concluded Euro 2028 was the only realistic prospect of success.

FA chief executive Mark Bullingham has previously hailed the prospect of what would remain the biggest sporting spectacle in the UK since the 2012 Olympics. The tournament is a major opportunity for the FA to repair the reputational damage after crowd trouble at the Euro 2020 Final at Wembley.

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