UEFA Nations League 2026-27: Format, Schedule and How to Check Scores
- 🔑 The UEFA Nations League’s 2026-27 league phase runs six matchdays from September 24 through November 17, 2026, with Leagues A, B and C now organized into four groups of four teams each, and the smaller League D split into two groups of three teams playing four matches apiece.
- League A’s eight group winners and runners-up advance to two-legged quarterfinals in March 2027, hosted by the group winner in the second leg. The four winners then meet at the Nations League Finals in June 2027, a four-team knockout with semifinals on June 9-10 and the third-place match and final on June 13.
- This is the final edition to include League D: UEFA’s 2028-29 cycle shrinks the competition to three 18-team leagues, so every League D team is moving up to League C after this season regardless of how it finishes its two-group, four-match campaign.
- Promotion and relegation go beyond simple group finishes — teams that miss automatic movement in Leagues A, B and C instead enter cross-league promotion/relegation playoffs in late March 2027, giving several mid-table finishers in every tier a shot at moving up or a fight to stay put.
- The UEFA Nations League is a separate competition from the CONCACAF Nations League, which is also underway this window. The United States and Mexico are seeded directly into that competition’s quarterfinals and are not playing any CONCACAF group-stage games this fall.
- This guide sticks to completed final scores, official schedule details, and confirmed format and promotion rules — nothing here is a prediction. No betting odds, point spreads, moneylines, or win-probability models appear anywhere on this page, for Matchday 2’s undecided games or any other fixture.
The UEFA Nations League’s 2026-27 season is running its league phase from September 24 through November 17, 2026, using a reorganized four-group format for its top three tiers, with knockout playoffs in March 2027 and the Finals in June 2027. As of Sunday morning, September 27, 2026, the competition is in the middle of Matchday 2, with a loaded League A slate later that day headlined by Norway hosting Portugal. Here’s how the whole season is built, what changed this year, and where to find scores as they come in.
What Is the UEFA Nations League, and What Changed This Season?
The UEFA Nations League is a competition for all of UEFA’s national teams, split into four tiers by strength, built to replace low-stakes friendlies with games that carry real promotion and relegation stakes. Launched in 2018-19, it’s now in its sixth edition. The 2026-27 season brought the biggest format change yet: Leagues A, B and C were each reorganized into four groups of four teams, replacing the previous mix of group sizes, while League D — the bottom tier — shrank to six teams split into two groups of three. This is also the final season to include League D at all; starting with the 2028-29 cycle, the competition consolidates into three leagues of 18 teams apiece.
How Are the Four Leagues Organized?
Leagues A, B and C each have 16 national teams split into four groups of four, while League D has six teams in two groups of three. Teams in the three larger leagues play six group games apiece, home and away against the other three sides in their group; League D’s smaller groups mean four matches each. Groups were seeded using each team’s ranking from the 2024-25 Nations League. In League A, for instance, Group 4 pairs Norway, Portugal, Denmark and Wales; Group 2 has Germany, the Netherlands, Serbia and Greece; Group 1 has Belgium, France, Turkey and Italy; and Group 3 has Spain, Croatia, England and Czechia.
What’s the Schedule, and What Already Happened on Matchday 1?
The league phase is split into six matchdays running from late September through mid-November 2026, and Matchday 1’s League A games are already final.
| Matchday | Dates |
|---|---|
| MD1 | Sept 24–26 |
| MD2 | Sept 27–29 |
| MD3 | Oct 1–3 |
| MD4 | Oct 4–6 |
| MD5 | Nov 12–14 |
| MD6 | Nov 15–17 |
League A’s opening weekend is done and in the books:
| Match | Score |
|---|---|
| Norway vs Denmark | 3-2 |
| Portugal vs Wales | 1-0 |
| Netherlands vs Germany | 1-1 |
| Serbia vs Greece | 1-2 |
| Italy vs Belgium | 0-2 |
| Turkey vs France | 0-1 |
| Czechia vs Croatia | 1-2 |
| England vs Spain | 2-3 |
Matchday 2 runs Sunday, September 27 through Tuesday, September 29. Sunday alone carries games across every tier: League A’s Denmark vs. Wales, Serbia vs. Netherlands, Germany vs. Greece and Norway vs. Portugal (kickoff 8:45 p.m. local time in Oslo — 2:45 p.m. Eastern), plus League B’s Austria vs. Kosovo and League D’s Gibraltar vs. Andorra, among others. Several of those games were still hours from kickoff as of Sunday morning Eastern time, so this guide isn’t reporting Matchday 2 scores — see below for where to track them as they land.
How Does Promotion and Relegation Work?
Group winners in Leagues B, C and D move up automatically, the bottom two teams in League A drop down automatically, and most other teams’ fates are decided by cross-league playoffs in late March 2027. League A works differently from the rest: instead of simple promotion, the winner and runner-up of each of its four groups — eight teams total — advance to two-legged quarterfinals in March 2027, with each group winner hosting the second leg; the four tie winners then move on to the Finals. Separately, teams that miss automatic promotion or safety by a narrow margin in Leagues A, B and C enter their own promotion/relegation playoffs, also in late March 2027, against opponents from the tier above or below — so a middling group finish doesn’t lock in a team’s league for next season. Because League D is being discontinued after this cycle, all six of its teams move up to League C regardless of how they finish.
When and Where Are the 2027 Nations League Finals?
The four League A quarterfinal winners advance to the Nations League Finals in June 2027, a four-team knockout with semifinals on June 9 and 10 and the third-place match and final on June 13. A host country had not been announced as of this writing. In recent editions, UEFA has awarded the Finals to one of the four qualifying teams once the quarterfinals were decided, and it’s expected to follow the same approach this time.
How Can I Check Live Scores and Standings?
The most reliable way to follow Matchday 2 and the rest of the season is the competition’s own official fixtures-and-results section, which updates in real time as goals go in and matches finish. Group tables there refresh automatically after every round, showing goal difference and points for every team in every group across all four leagues. A standard sports-score app or a national federation’s own site works well too. Because several Sunday, September 27 fixtures — Norway vs. Portugal chief among them — weren’t scheduled to finish until mid-afternoon or evening on the US East Coast, don’t expect a complete Matchday 2 table before Monday at the earliest; Group 1’s games fall on Monday, September 28, and Group 3’s on Tuesday, September 29.
Is This the Same Competition as the CONCACAF Nations League?
No — the CONCACAF Nations League is a completely separate competition for national teams across North America, Central America and the Caribbean, and its current group stage simply happens to overlap with UEFA’s this fall. Its 2026-27 group stage runs September 24 through October 5, 2026, ahead of quarterfinals in November and Finals in March 2027. The United States and Mexico aren’t playing any group-stage games in it this window at all: as two of the four highest-ranked teams in Concacaf’s top division, they were seeded directly into the quarterfinals and skip the group stage entirely. Any USA or Mexico friendlies against South American opponents during this same international window are exhibition matches, not Nations League fixtures, since those opponents belong to CONMEBOL — a different confederation altogether.
The Bottom Line
The 2026-27 Nations League still has close to two months of group games left before anything is settled, but the framework holds regardless of how any single weekend’s fixtures turn out: four leagues, a March 2027 knockout window, and a June 2027 Finals. Check the official standings as results roll in over the coming matchdays, and treat any one Sunday’s scoreline as a single data point in a six-game group stage — not the last word on who’s headed up or down.