UEFA European Championship
European championship for national association football teams
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The UEFA European Football Championship, less formally the European Championship and informally the Euro or Euros, is the primary association football tournament organised by UEFA. The competition is contested by members' senior men's national teams, determining the continental champion of Europe. It is the second-most watched football tournament in the world after the FIFA World Cup. It was originally called the European Nations' Cup before changing to its current name in 1968.
The competition has generally been held every four years, scheduled to be in the even-numbered year between FIFA World Cup tournaments. It is staggered on an alternating two-year cycle with the UEFA Nations League. Before entering the tournament, all teams other than the host nations (which qualify automatically) compete in a qualifying process. From the 2020 edition onwards, the winner plays the Copa América champion in the Finalissima.
The seventeen European Championship tournaments have been won by ten national teams: Spain has won four titles; Germany has won three; Italy and France have won two titles; and the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, Denmark, Greece, and Portugal have won one title each. To date, Spain is the only team to have won consecutive titles, doing so in 2008 and 2012.
History
Beginnings (1960–1976)
Regional tournaments for national teams existed before the advent of an authentic pan-European competition.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “UEFA European Championship” is european championship for national association football teams. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through UEFA, European and Championship, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “european championship for national association football teams” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q260858. VIAF identifies the subject as 146042341. The Library of Congress control number is no2021036339. Authority coordinates are 48.691, 9.141. 2 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1968, 2020, 2008 and 2012.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “UEFA European Championship”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow UEFA European Championship primary sources, UEFA European Championship archive and UEFA research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “UEFA European Championship”?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “UEFA European Championship” 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.