Everything you need to know about the new-format Euro 2020 draw

The Euro 2020 draw is on Saturday, Nov. 30 in Bucharest, Romania. Here’s everything you need to know about the event.

With European Championship qualifiers almost complete (the playoffs for the final four spots will take place on March 26 and 31, 2020), UEFA will conduct its much-anticipated tournament draw ceremony on Saturday in Bucharest.

The finals will feature 24 teams (20 of them qualified automatically as group winners and runners-up), while the final four spots will be decided next year with teams ranked according to how they did in the UEFA Nations League.

This draw will be different than past ones for an array of reasons. Since there is no one host nation, the 60th anniversary edition of the tournament will instead feature 12 host cities scattered across the continent. That means host nations will automatically be drawn in the cities already chosen to host certain groups. Romania, Scotland, Ireland and Hungary, teams with venues pre-chosen to host matches, have made the playoffs. Azerbaijan failed to qualify.

This is a look at how the draw will look from the start and the two host cities pre-assigned to each group:

• Group A (Rome and Baku) will feature Italy.
• Group B (Saint Petersburg and Copenhagen) will feature Russia and Denmark.
• Group C (Amsterdam and Bucharest) will feature the Netherlands and Romania (should they qualify).
• Group D (London and Glasgow) will feature England and Scotland (should they qualify).
• Group E (Bilbao and Dublin) will feature Spain and Ireland (should they qualify).
• Group F (Munich and Budapest) will feature Germany and Hungary (should they qualify).

The 20 nations that have already qualified for the finals are Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Turkey, Ukraine and Wales.

UEFA has also seeded the teams based solely on how they did in qualifying, a departure from past editions where their performances took into account how a team did across all games over a three-year period. As a result, there are a limited number of permutations.

The teams are divided into the following pots.

Pot 1:

• Belgium
• Italy
• England
• Germany
• Spain
• Ukraine

Pot 2:

• France
• Poland
• Switzerland
• Croatia
• The Netherlands
• Russia

Pot 3:

• Portugal
• Turkey
• Denmark
• Austria
• Sweden
• Czech Republic

Pot 4:

• Wales
• Finland
• Playoff contenders

The draw’s format isn’t without controversy. Belgium star Kevin De Bruyne recently called it “a scandal” given the limitations of each group’s makeup for geographic reasons.

“Football is not really football anymore, it’s becoming a business. As a player you have to get used to it, but for me they are sort of falsifying the competition,” he said. “It takes all the pleasure away from the draw.”

Dutch coach Ronald Koeman admitted he didn’t “really understand” the draw’s format.

“I have asked my federation if I still need to bother going to the draw on November 30,” he told the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf.

The tournament will open at the Olympic Stadium in Rome on June 12 and feature Italy, a four-time World Cup champion and winners of the European title in 1968. The final will be played in London on July 12 at Wembley Stadium.

Portugal are the defending champions after having defeated France in the final back in 2016.