The UEFA Nations League is the competition UEFA runs for its European national teams, created to fill the autumn dates that friendly internationals used to occupy. The entry list runs to fifty-four federations. Sixteen play in League A, sixteen more in each of the two divisions below it, always split four ways; League D is the exception, with six teams sharing a pair of groups. The competition returns every two years, and the season now starting is its fifth: four editions have been settled since 2018/19, the last of them in June 2025.
Only the top division plays for the trophy. Portugal defend it after the penalty shoot-out of June 2025, a second title to go with the first one of 2019, and no other nation has won the competition twice. Every group table does two jobs at once: at the top it opens the way to the quarter-finals and to the June week of 2027, at the bottom it pushes a team out of League A.
What each finishing place is worth π
Brussels produced the groups of this edition on 12 February 2026. France came out of it in A1 with Italy, Belgium and Turkey; Spain, England, Croatia and Czechia share A3; A2 sends Germany to the Netherlands on the opening night, with Serbia and Greece completing it; and A4 puts the holders next to Denmark, Norway and Wales. Six matches follow for each side, home and away against three rivals, and then the table is read from top to bottom.
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First | Quarter-final against the runner-up of another group | Two legs, late March 2027 |
Second | Quarter-final against a group winner | Two legs, late March 2027 |
Third | Play-out against a runner-up from the division below | Two legs, late March 2027 |
Fourth | Relegation, with no second chance | Settled on the last matchday |
That spring round is young: it was added for the 2024/25 edition, and it is the reason a group can now be won in November with a tie still to come. The March dates run from 25 to 30 for both of those rounds, and the four sides that come through the quarter-finals travel to the closing week between 9 and 13 June 2027: two semi-finals, a decider for third place, then the final itself. Four winners of League B groups take the places that fall free above them.
Neutral ground: the teams Djibouti follows π©π―
Djibouti has no side in this draw. The tournament is closed to federations outside Europe, whichever division you look at, so the country watches as a neutral β and in a French-speaking audience the French programme pulls hardest. That card reads: Turkey away on 25 September, Belgium away on 28 September, Italy at home on 2 October, Belgium again on 5 October, the return in Italy on 12 November, then Turkey at home to close.
Group A3 takes the second share of attention. Spain, champions of 2023 and beaten finalists in 2025, open away to England on 26 September and close at home to the same opponent on 15 November. Fixtures of this kind are listed under Football on the pre-match line while the window is still days away, and each one switches to football odds in play the moment the referee starts it.
Matchdays by the Djibouti clock π
Europe is still on summer time when the first four matchdays are played, and Djibouti sits three hours ahead of UTC without a seasonal change. That puts a 20:45 CET game at 21:45 here and an 18:00 CET one at 19:00. Once the European clocks go back for the November window, every start slides an hour later: the early kick-offs move to 20:00 and the main game of the evening runs past midnight.
Seven of the autumn fixtures, with the hour they begin in Djibouti:
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Italy β Belgium | September 25 | A1 | 21:45 |
Denmark β Wales | September 27 | A4 | 19:00 |
Spain β Croatia | September 29 | A3 | 21:45 |
France β Italy | October 2 | A1 | 21:45 |
Croatia β England | October 3 | A3 | 19:00 |
Greece β Germany | October 4 | A2 | 21:45 |
Portugal β Norway | October 4 | A4 | 21:45 |
The two rows at 19:00 fit inside a working evening; the rest run late, which is where the site as it works on a phone earns its keep, with the coupon in hand while the second half plays out. Two fixtures often share the same slot, so a single evening can hold both a group leader and a side fighting the drop.
From one evening to the whole autumn: the UEFA Nations League card
A matchday is loaded fixture by fixture long before the window opens. The markets are the ordinary football set β the result over ninety minutes, the double chance, handicaps and totals, both sides scoring, the exact score, or how a single half ends β and they stay on the page until the first whistle, when live takes over.
A bet that rides the whole autumn belongs in the outright section instead: who lifts the trophy in June, and who ends the group phase in first place. Those pages sit one level up, among every competition listed before kick-off, sport by sport. A balance opened in Djibouti is counted in Djiboutian francs (DJF), and the cashier works in the same currency from the first deposit to the payout.
Munich and Stuttgart, June 2025
Two German cities closed the previous edition. Munich had the first semi-final on 4 June 2025, where Portugal put the hosts out 2:1; Stuttgart followed a day later with Spain against France, 5:4 to the Spanish; the two beaten sides met again in Stuttgart on 8 June, and France won that third-place match by two clear goals.
The final, back in Munich that same evening, went the distance: 2:2 when extra time ran out, then 5:3 to Portugal from the penalty spot. Nuno Mendes was picked as the player of those finals, while Cristiano Ronaldo ended the whole 2024/25 campaign as its leading scorer with 8 goals. Nations League nights, and everything else on the card, open from the day's programme in Djibouti.
