UEFA Euro 1996
10th European association football championship
The 1996 UEFA European Football Championship, commonly referred to as Euro 96, was the 10th UEFA European Championship, a quadrennial football tournament contested by European nations and organised by UEFA. It took place in England from 8 to 30 June 1996. It was the first ever European Championship to feature 16 teams, an expansion from eight teams.
Matches were staged in eight cities and, although not all games were sold out, the tournament holds the European Championship's second-highest aggregate attendance (1,276,000) and average per game (41,158) for the 16-team format, surpassed only in 2012.
The tournament was the first European Championship where three points were awarded for a win during the qualification and finals group stages, as opposed to the old system of two points for a win, reflecting the growing use of this system in domestic leagues throughout the world during the previous decade.
Germany won the tournament, beating the Czech Republic 2–1 in the final with a golden goal from Oliver Bierhoff during extra time; this was the first major competition to be decided using this method. This was also Germany's first major title won as a unified nation, adding to the two European Championship titles won by West Germany prior to reunification.
Bid process
At the time of the bidding process, it had not yet been confirmed that 16 teams would be participating. Instead, the bids were largely prepared as if hosting an eight-team tournament, meaning only four venues were due to be required. All candidates had to submit their plans by 10 December 1991.
The hosting of the event was contested by five bids: Austria, England, Greece, the Netherlands and Portugal.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “UEFA Euro 1996” as 10th European association football championship. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as 10th European association football championship. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q180563. VIAF identifies the subject as 101144647639590707289. Authority coordinates are 51.556, -0.280. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1996, 2012 and 1991.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
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- Expand the search: follow UEFA Euro 1996 primary sources, UEFA Euro 1996 archive and UEFA research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “UEFA Euro 1996” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.