The draws for the UEFA European Futsal Championship 2024-26 main round were held on Thursday with Malta ending up in Group 2 along with Finland, Italy and Belarus.

This is the first time the Malta Futsal national team is taking part in the Main Round of competition after defeating Scotland 4-1, Gibraltar 8-0 and hosts Switzerland 2-1 in the Preliminary Round. In fact, Malta got through a round of qualifying for the first time to reach this stage and had never won a competitive game before the preliminary round.

This enabled Gabriel Dobre’s side to climb fourteen places to 103rd place in the FIFA rankings from the previous 117th place.

The UEFA Futsal EURO 2026 main round draw split the 40 contenders into ten groups of four, played as home-and-away games between December 2024 and April 2025. The ten main round group winners join co-hosts Latvia and Lithuania in the 2026 finals, with the eight best runners-up entering the play-offs in September 2025.

Finland, lost in the 2022 quarter-finals and Italy were one of the participants. Belarus had also previously qualified.

Futsal EURO 2026 main round groups

Group 1: Ukraine, Romania, Germany, Cyprus
Group 2: Finland, Italy, Belarus, Malta
Group 3: Poland, Slovakia, Moldova, Türkiye
Group 4: Slovenia, Hungary, Montenegro, Norway
Group 5: Croatia, Azerbaijan, Sweden, Greece
Group 6: Kazakhstan, Armenia, Denmark, Albania
Group 7: Portugal (holders), Netherlands, North Macedonia, Andorra
Group 8: Spain, Bosnia and Herzegovina, England, Switzerland
Group 9: Serbia, Czechia, Belgium, Austria
Group 10: France, Georgia, Kosovo, Bulgaria