The 2025 UEFA European Under-17 Championship qualification is a men's under-17 national football team competition that will determine 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.
The qualifying competition consists of the following two rounds:
Round 1: 54 teams were drawn into 14 groups. Each group will be 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 will play in the Round 2 League B.
Round 2:
League A: 28 teams will be drawn into 7 groups of four. The winners of each group will qualify for the Final tournament. If Albania will be among the seven qualified teams, then the best runner-up team will also qualify.
League B: Teams in League B will compete for promotion to League A for qualifying round 1 of the 2026/27 U19 EURO.
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]
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.