The 2016 UEFA Women's Under-19 Championship was the 15th edition of the UEFA Women's Under-19 Championship (19th edition if the Under-18 era is included), the annual European international youth football championship contested by the women's under-19 national teams of UEFA member associations. Slovakia, which were selected by UEFA on 20 March 2012, hosted the tournament between 19 and 31 July 2016.
A total of eight teams played in the tournament, with players born on or after 1 January 1997 eligible to participate.
The national teams from 47 UEFA member associations entered the competition. With Slovakia automatically qualified as hosts, the other 46 teams contested a qualifying competition to determine the remaining seven spots in the final tournament. The qualifying competition consisted of two rounds: the qualifying round, which took place in autumn 2015, and the elite round, which took place in spring 2016.
The following eight teams qualified for the final tournament:
Note: All appearance statistics include only U-19 era (since 2002).
The final draw was held on 24 May 2016, 10:00 CEST (), at the Hotel Gate One in Bratislava, Slovakia. The eight teams were drawn into two groups of four teams. There was no seeding, except that hosts Slovakia were assigned to position A1 in the draw.
The tournament was hosted in four venues:
Each national team had to submit a squad of 18 players.
A total of 6 referees, 8 assistant referees and 2 fourth officials were appointed for the final tournament.
The final tournament schedule was confirmed on 1 June 2016.
The group winners and runners-up advanced to the semi-finals.
The teams were ranked according to points (3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, 0 points for a loss). If two or more teams were equal on points on completion of the group matches, the following tie-breaking criteria were applied, in the order given, to determine the rankings:
All times were local, CEST ().
The match was abandoned after 50 minutes with the score 0âÂÂ0 after heavy rain made the pitch unplayable. With France beating the Netherlands 2âÂÂ1 elsewhere in the final round of group games, neither Norway nor Slovakia could have finished in the top two and reached the semi-finals. The match was therefore not concluded and the result stands at 0âÂÂ0.
In the knockout stage, extra time and penalty shoot-out were used to decide the winner if necessary.
On 2 May 2016, the UEFA Executive Committee agreed that the competition would be part of the International Football Association Board's trial to allow a fourth substitute to be made during extra time.
The final was interrupted after the first half due to heavy rain and the resulting unfit terrain, and the second half began following a two-hour delay.