Switzerland confirmed as host nation for UEFA Women's Euro 2025

Switzerland has been named as the host nation for UEFA Women’s Euro 2025, following from a successful – but delayed due to Covid-19 – tournament in England last summer.

The decision was made at the UEFA Executive Committee meeting in Lisbon on Tuesday afternoon. Set to host a major women’s tournament for the first time, Switzerland was picked ahead of rival bids from France, Poland and a combined Nordic bid from Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland.

Switzerland will now automatically qualify for Euro 2025 as a result of their hosting duties, making it a third successive European Championship appearance – they will hope to do better than group stage exits in 2017 and 2022. The Swiss will also be at the 2023 World Cup this summer.

Basel, Bern, Geneva, Lucerne, Lausanne, Zurich, Thun, St Gallen and Sion were named in the bid as candidate host cities to stage games.

Euro 2022 was a tremendous success and a significant watershed moment for women’s football. A cumulative global audience in excess of 365 million tuned in to watch the tournament, which was more than double that of Euro 2017 five years earlier.

The total tournament attendance of 574,875 also smashed the previous record of 240,055, which had been set in 2017. There was a record average attendance of 18,544 across all games, again more than doubling a previous record of 9,000 that had been set way back in 1989.

As many as 87,192 people attended the final between England and Germany at Wembley, which set a new record in European Championship history, for either men’s or women’s tournaments.