UK and Ireland look likely to be confirmed as hosts of Euro 2028
Football might just be coming home in 2028
Last updated 29th May 2022
The UK and Ireland are due to be confirmed as the hosts of the Euro 2028 Championship by UEFA.
Ahead of the deadline on Wednesday (March 23rd) at 5pm, there are currently no other bids in the running to host the tournament.
According to rules set up by the European football governing body in October last year, potential bidders would be confirmed and revealed on April 5th.
There had been a bid from the Russian Federation to host the tournament across the country, but as a result of Russia's invasion of neighbouring Ukraine the bid has been rejected.
As a result, if there are no bids presented before the 5pm deadline, the UK and Ireland will automatically win the right to welcome football fans from across Europe as it currently runs unopposed.
The opportunity to bid to host Euro 2028 came at the cost of launching a bid to host the World Cup in 2030.
However, Football Association chief executive Mark Bullingham said that the World Cup would be logistically harder to put together and instead, chose a more effective tournament to bid for.
"When you look at it for the Euros, we've got a very clear bidding landscape and bidding timeline and, when we assess everything for that, we know we can put together a highly-competitive bid," he said.
"I think with the World Cup, there are many areas of uncertainty, in terms of the timeline, in terms of the frequency of the events and so on."
UEFA are also due to announce that the number of competing teams in the tournament will rise from 28 to 32.
But if the bid to host the championship is successful, it will present an issue for both organisers and UEFA itself.
According to the rules, the host country is automatically qualified for the tournament. However, with five nations joining together in a bid, it is unclear which country would not need to qualify.
During the bidding process in October, UEFA clarified: "In order to ensure compatibility with the competition's sporting and commercial format, the automatic qualification of the host team(s) shall be guaranteed only for a single host or a maximum of two joint host associations, as always implemented in the past.
"In case of more than two joint host associations, the automatic qualification of all the host teams cannot be guaranteed and shall be subject to a decision to be made in conjunction with decisions concerning the qualifying competition."