Previous European championships In 1957 in
West Berlin, a European Championship was staged by the International Ladies Football Association. Four teams, representing West Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, and the eventual winners, England, played the tournament at the
Poststadion, The Italian Women's Football Federation FICF, which eventually merged into the
Italian Football Federation, organised a
European tournament in Italy in 1969 for women's national teams, a tournament won by the home team,
Italy, who beat
Denmark 3–1 in the final. The two nations were also the finalists of the
1970 Women's World Cup in Italy. Italy hosted another European women's tournament a decade later, the
1979 European Competition for Women's Football – won by
Denmark. UEFA displayed little enthusiasm for women's football and were particularly hostile to Italy's independent women's football federation.
Sue Lopez, a member of England's squad, contended that a lack of female representation in UEFA was a contributory factor:
UEFA organised championships At a conference on 19 February 1980 UEFA resolved to launch its own competition for women's national teams. The meeting minutes had registered the
1979 competition as a "cause for concern".
Qualification for the first
UEFA-run international tournament began in 1982, with the inaugural
1984 competition being won by
Sweden.
Norway won the second competition in
1987. A period of
German domination then followed, with Germany winning 8 of the 9 competitions from 1989 to 2013, interrupted only by
Norway in
1993.
The Netherlands won in
2017 followed by
England winning the most recent two editions of the competition in
2022 and
2025. From 1984 to 1995, the tournament was initially played as a four-team event. The 1997 edition was the first that was played with eight teams, followed by the 2001 and 2005 editions. The third expansion happened between 2009 and 2013 when 12 teams participated. From 2017 onwards 16 teams compete for the championship. The first three tournaments of the UEFA competition in the 1980s had the name "European Competition for Representative Women's Teams". With UEFA's increasing acceptance of women's football, this competition was given European Championship status by UEFA around 1990. Only the
1991 and
1995 editions have been used as European qualifiers for a
FIFA Women's World Cup; starting in 1999, women's national teams adopted the separate
World Cup qualifying competition and group system used in men's qualifiers. ==Results==