UEFA picks bigger stadiums for Conference League finals and confirms 2026 World Cup qualifying path

UEFA picked bigger stadiums Wednesday to host the next two Europa Conference League finals after sub-20,000 capacity venues staged the previous two title games involving clubs from Italy, England and the Netherlands.

The 2024 final in UEFA’s third-tier club competition was awarded to the new AEK Athens stadium which should hold about 30,000 spectators.

In 2025, Slask Wrocław’s stadium will host the final. The venue drew crowds of about 41,000 for three games at the 2012 European Championship that Poland co-hosted with Ukraine.

UEFA’s choices seemed to acknowledge a misjudgment in preseason choices for final hosts in a competition that started in the 2021-22 season.

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Fewer than 20,000 fans could get into the new national stadium in Tirana, Albania, for the inaugural final between Roma and Feyenoord in 2022.

The 19,000-capacity Slavia Prague stadium was chosen for the 2023 final between West Ham and Fiorentina. West Ham averages more than 62,000 for home games in the Premier League and won playing in its first European final for 47 years.

Teams in next season’s competition with large contingents of traveling fans include Eintracht Frankfurt and Hajduk Split. The current lineup also includes Juventus and Aston Villa though both risk being excluded because of pending UEFA decisions on, respectively, financial wrongdoing and being in shared ownership with another club that qualified for Europe.

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UEFA said it will “provide expertise” in Athens at games over the coming months because the AEK stadium “is brand new and never operated by the club in an international context.”

In a separate decision, the competition will be rebranded next year to just the UEFA Conference League. UEFA said that will help distinguish it from the Europa League which also plays on Thursdays through the season.

Sporting Lisbon’s stadium, which has a 50,000 capacity, was picked to host the Women’s Champions League final in 2025.

UEFA did not schedule a news conference after its executive committee met Wednesday to discuss decisions in European soccer.

2026 WORLD CUP

The committee also confirmed a plan announced January for the European qualification format for men’s national teams for the 2026 World Cup.

Europe has 16 entries in the first 48-team lineup — which will be hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico — and 12 will go directly to the winners of qualifying groups now slimmed down to four or five teams instead of five or six.

Four World Cup entries will be earned through playoff brackets involving 16 nations – the 12 runners-up of qualifying groups plus four teams advancing from Nations League standings.