Sweden and Denmark are moving forward with their joint bid to host the 2029 European Championship for women's football.
However, Uefa is setting high demands on the stadiums' spectator capacity – Sweden's women's national team's home stadium, Gamla Ullevi, currently does not meet the requirement.
As early as February, Fredrik Reinfeldt, chairman of the Swedish Football Association, and Jesper Møller, chairman of the Danish Football Association, announced that the countries are planning a joint bid for the 2029 Women's European Championship.
Now, the European Football Association (Uefa) has opened the application process, and the two countries are still interested in hosting the tournament. Just like the last two tournaments, 16 national teams will participate.
The final criteria are expected to be made public in the autumn, and only then will the Swedish-Danish bid be finalized.
Requires large spectator capacity
"We believe that we can offer a tight European Championship on modern stadiums in 2029," says Fredrik Reinfeldt on the association's website.
The stadiums, however, may pose a major challenge – Uefa announced tough demands on Tuesday.
+ The organizers must have eight stadiums, and all must have natural grass.
+ One stadium must have a minimum of 50,000 seats in spectator capacity, three must have at least 30,000 seats, and four more stadiums must have at least 20,000 seats.
The Swedish men's national team's home stadium – now known as the Strawberry arena – in Solna has a capacity of around 50,000 spectators during sports events, according to the website.
In Denmark, there is no stadium with such a large capacity. The national arena, Parken, in Copenhagen, takes around 38,000 spectators at football matches. The second-largest stadium in the two countries is Ullevi in Gothenburg, which, according to Got Events' website, takes around 40,000 spectators.
No games at the women's national arena?
There is no other stadium besides these three that takes over 30,000 spectators and has natural grass in Sweden and Denmark. The Tele2 arena in Stockholm has a capacity of around 30,000 seated spectators during sports events, but football is played on artificial grass there.
The Swedish women's national team's home stadium is Gamla Ullevi in Gothenburg, but the stadium currently only takes around 16,600 seated spectators, according to Got Event.
The Football Association's press department tells TT that they currently have no comment on Uefa's stadium requirements since the "initial planning" of the bid is ongoing. The association also wants to wait for further application requirements from Uefa, which are expected in October.
Uefa will make a decision on the host country in December 2025.
