The DFB have given 14 cities and stadia until Monday 10th July (12:00 CEST) to submit a bid to be a host city for the 2024 UEFA European Championship, which could be held in Germany. Only ten will be chosen, and the cities and stadia in the running are: Berlin (Olympiastadion), Bremen (Weserstadion), Dortmund (Signal Iduna Park), Düsseldorf (ESPRIT arena), Frankfurt am Main (Commerzbank-Arena), Gelsenkirchen (VELTINS-Arena), Hamburg (Volksparkstadion), Hannover (HDI Arena), Cologne (RheinEnergieSTADION), Leipzig (Red Bull Arena), Mönchengladbach (BORUSSIA-PARK), Munich (Allianz Arena), Nuremberg (Max-Morlock-Stadion) and Stuttgart (Mercedes-Benz Arena).
Parallel to the 14 applications from each city and stadium, there will also be site visits to each stadium starting from the end of July. These visits are not only required by UEFA, but also highlight any refurbishments or expansions which may need to be undertaken. The bid committee will then rank each application and give their view on it. On this basis, the DFB presidential board will make a final decision on September 15th 2017, announcing the ten chosen host cities which the DFB will use in their own official bid to UEFA. During the whole process, all members of the presidential board and the bidding committee, as well as all stadium bids, will work in accordance to guidelines set out by Transparency International Deutschland e.V.. Germany’s bidding procedure began on April 11th at the DFB headquarters in Frankfurt am Main with a workshop.
DFB president Reinhard Grindel says: “We’re very happy that 14 stadia and cities from every region of Germany have submitted a bid and want to be there when we go for EURO 2024. The atmosphere in the stadia, the quality of the stadia and the expertise at every location will bode extremely well for our bid. The requirements of each application, even in this first national bidding process, were strict, therefore I’d like to thank all the stadia and cities involved for the work they’ve done. It is important to us that the people behind every one of the 14 applications find out either why they were chosen, or why their bid wasn’t taken into consideration.”
DFB general secretary Dr. Friedrich Curtius says: “The cities and stadia have invested a lot of time and effort into their bids. Now it’s about analysing them, taking into account UEFA’s clearly defined criteria and the DFB presidential board making the right decision, so that we can go to UEFA with the strongest bid and most powerful arguments. We will also, amongst other things, conduct on-site inspections of all potential stadia once more.”
The football associations of each country that wishes to make a bid to host the 2024 Euros, will have to do so by April 27th 2018. The successful bid will then be announced by UEFA in September of 2018.