Northern Ireland’s men’s Under-21 side will take on Germany, Georgia and Greece in the qualifiers for U21 Euro 2027.
Tommy Wright’s team are also set to face Latvia and Malta in the 2025-27 UEFA European Under-21 Championship qualifying group stage.
The draw for stage one of the qualifiers was held today at UEFA HQ in Nyon, Switzerland, and streamed live on uefa.com.
Northern Ireland, who are in six-team Group F, were in Pot 4 for the draw - based on UEFA’s co-efficient ranking system.
Germany were drawn from Pot 1 and Georgia from Pot 2, while Greece were among the Pot 3 sides. Latvia were in Pot 5 and Malta in Pot 6.
Group games will take place between next month and October next year, followed by play-offs in November 2026 ahead of the final tournament in June 2027 in Albania and Serbia.
The 51 participating teams from across Europe were drawn into six groups of six teams and three groups of five teams.
The nine group winners and the runner-up with the best record against the top five in their group qualify directly for the final tournament to join co-hosts Albania and Serbia. The eight other runners-up will contest play-offs to determine the four remaining finalists.
Northern Ireland finished fourth in Group F of the UEFA U21 Euro 2025 qualifiers on 11 points, ahead of Luxembourg (eight points) and Azerbaijan (three points).
Serbia (16 points) finished third in Group F, while Ukraine (24 points) and England (25 points) qualified automatically for the 2025 finals in Slovakia as one of the three best runners-up and the group winners respectively.
The dates for games in the U21 Euro 2027 qualifying group stage are:
▪ 17–25 March 2025
▪ 2–10 June 2025
▪ 1–9 September 2025
▪ 6–14 October 2025
▪ 10–18 November 2025
▪ 23–31 March 2026
▪ 21 September–6 October 2026
Play-offs
▪ 9–17 November 2026
