2008 European Sevens Championship
 |
|
| Tournament details | |
|---|---|
| Host nation |
 GER
|
| Dates | July 12 – July 13 |
| No. of nations | 12 |
Champions 
|
 Portugal
|
| Tournament statistics | |
| Matches played | 42 |
| Top scorer(s) |
Pedro Leal
|
|
← 2007
2009 →
|
|
| Qualified for the Cup stage |
| Qualified for the Plate stage |
| Qualified for the Bowl stage |
The 2008 European Sevens Championship was a rugby sevens competition, with the final held in Hanover, Germany. It was the seventh edition of the European Sevens championship and also functioned as a qualifying tournament for the 2009 Rugby World Cup Sevens. The event was organised by rugby's European governing body, the FIRA – Association of European Rugby (FIRA-AER).
The finals tournament held in Hanover, Germany on 12 and 13 July 2008, as well as being the European Sevens Championship, functioned as a qualifying tournament for the world cup. England, France and Scotland had already qualified through their past performance. The five best nations out of the twelve participating ones qualified for the Dubai tournament. Teams finished in the following order:
On 16 June 2007, the FIRA congress in Monaco decided to award the finals tournament to Hanover, beating bids from Russia, Greece and Bosnia-Herzegovina in the process.
From 2002, FIRA, the governing body of European rugby, has been organising an annual European Sevens Championship tournament. A number of qualifying tournaments lead up to a finals tournament, which functions as the European championship and, in 2008, also as the qualifying stage for the Sevens World Cup.
The first European Championship was held in 2002 in Heidelberg, Germany, and was won by Portugal, the team that won every championship since except 2007, when Russia won.
The next year, the tournament was again held in Heidelberg and in 2004, Palma de Mallorca, Spain was the host.
From 2005 to 2007, Moscow was the host of the tournament.
Hanover held the tournament for the first time in 2008 and will do so again in 2009.
The finals tournament was held at the AWD-Arena in Hanover, home ground of the football club Hannover 96. The stadium holds 50.000 spectators, 43,000 of them on seats, the rest standing.
The tournament was seen by over 30,000 spectators, a good turn out in a country like Germany, where rugby is not a mainstream sport. After selling more than 35,000 tickets in advance, mostly within Germany, the organisers were forced to open up the upper tier of the stadium to meet demand.
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