UEFA Euro 2020 bids

The bidding process for the UEFA Euro 2020 is the process by which the location for the 16th European Championship, commonly referred to as Euro 2020, was selected. The process officially began on 21 March 2012 with the intent to announce the hosts in late 2013 or early 2014. Despite interest from Turkey, a joint bid from Scotland, the Republic of Ireland and Wales and a proposal from Georgia and Azerbaijan, UEFA announced on 6 December 2012 that it had made the unprecedented decision to host the tournament in multiple cities across Europe.

Euro 2020 will be the second tournament to involve 24 nations, following UEFA Euro 2016 four years previously.

It was initially envisaged that the tournament would be contained within one, two or three countries. In the case of multiple countries hosting the tournament, these countries would have to share a border. Assuming no changes from the Euro 2016 bidding process, the basic hosting requirements were to be as follows:

On 21 March 2012, UEFA announced that the bidding process would be as set out below in the event that more than one expression of interest in bidding was received by UEFA before 15 May 2012. Without a second bid, UEFA stated that the hosts would be confirmed on 15 May, subject to the confederation receiving the necessary guarantees. On 16 May 2012, UEFA announced that, because more than one national association had submitted their interest, it would begin its formal selection process and would allow any of the 54 national federations to bid, even if they chose not to declare an interest prior to the deadline. The timeline for the rest of the procedure was announced by UEFA on 30 June 2012.

Turkey, a joint Scottish, Irish and Welsh bid and an Azerbaijani-Georgian bid all formally confirmed their interest in hosting Euro 2020 with UEFA in the spring of 2012. The deadline for declarations of interest was at midnight on 15 May 2012, but UEFA announced that further bids were welcome on 16 May.

By and large, this was seen as a disappointing group of hosts to select from, especially as favourite for the bid Turkey favoured a bid to host the 2020 Summer Olympics in its largest city Istanbul, held in the same year and seen as an obstacle to the hosting of Euro 2020. UEFA President Michel Platini was previously reported to have promised the tournament to Turkey.

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