The 2025 UEFA European Under-17 Championship qualification was a men's under-17 national football team competition that determined the 7 teams joining the automatically qualified hosts Albania in the 2025 UEFA European Under-17 Championship final tournament.
Russia were excluded from the tournament due to the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Therefore, 54 teams entered this qualification competition including also hosts Albania, as it was the first time in the championship's history that the hosts started from the qualifying round however being automatically qualified. The qualification consists of a Round 1 played from October to November 2024, followed by a Round 2 played in spring 2025. Players born on or after 1 January 2008 are eligible to participate.
Format
The qualifying competition consists of the following two rounds:
Round 1: 54 teams were drawn into 14 groups. Each group was played in a single round-robin format at one of the teams selected as hosts after the draw. The top two teams from each group advance to the Round 2 League A; the other teams played in the Round 2 League B.
Round 2:
League A: 28 teams were drawn into 7 groups of four. The winners of each group qualified for the Final tournament. If Albania was among the seven qualified teams, then the best runner-up team would also qualify.
League B: Teams in League B competed for promotion to League A for qualifying round 1 of the 2026/27 U19 EURO.
In addition, the qualification also act as the UEFA qualifiers for the FIFA U-17 World Cup, with Round 1 being the First Round and Round 2 League A being the Final Round of World Cup qualifying (which also the reason why the hosts also take part in qualifying competition). The winners of each group, along with the four best second-placed teams, qualified for the 2025 FIFA U-17 World Cup.
Tiebreakers
In the qualifying rounds, teams are ranked according to points (3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, 0 points for a loss), and if tied on points, the following tiebreaking criteria were applied, in the order given, to determine the rankings (Regulations Articles 14.01 and 14.02):[1]
Goals scored in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
If more than two teams are tied, and after applying all head-to-head criteria above, a subset of teams are still tied, all head-to-head criteria above are reapplied exclusively to this subset of teams;
Goal difference in all group matches;
Goals scored in all group matches;
Penalty shoot-out if only two teams had the same number of points, and they met in the last round of the group and were tied after applying all criteria above (not used if more than two teams had the same number of points, or if their rankings were not relevant for qualification for the next stage);
Disciplinary points (red card = 3 points, yellow card = 1 point, expulsion for two yellow cards in one match = 3 points);
UEFA coefficient ranking for the qualifying round draw;
Drawing of lots.
To determine the four best third-placed teams from the qualifying round, the results against the teams in fourth place were discarded. The following criteria were applied (Regulations Articles 15.01 and 15.03):[1]
Points;
Goal difference;
Goals scored;
Disciplinary points (total 3 matches);
UEFA coefficient ranking for the qualifying round draw;
Drawing of lots.
To determine the seven best runners-up from the elite round, all results were considered. The same criteria as above were applied (Regulations Articles 15.02 and 15.03).[1]
Round 1
Draw
The draw for the Round 1 was held on 3 May 2024 at the UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland.[2]
The teams were seeded according to their coefficient ranking, calculated based on the following:[3]
Each group contains one team from Pot A, one team from Pot B, one team from Pot C, and 12 groups contain one team from Pot D. Based on the decisions taken by the UEFA Emergency Panel, the following pairs of teams could not be drawn in the same group: Spain and Gibraltar, Belarus and Ukraine, Kosovo and Serbia, Kosovo and Bosnia & Herzegovina.
The draw for Round 2 was made at 11:45 CET on 5 December at the UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland.[4]
The 28 teams of Round 1 (top 2 of each group) are drawn in seven groups of four teams.[5] The seven teams ranked fourth in the League A groups will be relegated to League B for round 1 of U19 EURO qualifying for the same age cohort (so teams relegated from League A in 2024/25 U17 EURO round 2 will begin 2026/27 U19 EURO round 1 in League B).
The teams are seeded according to their results in the round 1 (Regulations Article 15.01).[6]
The third and fourth-placed teams in Round 1 will enter League B. The teams are seeded according to their results in the round 1 into five groups of four and two groups of three teams. The seven League B winners will be promoted to League A for round 1 of 2026/27 U19 EURO qualifying.
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Lennart Karl 
