European Championship

A European Championship is the top level international sports competition between European athletes or sports teams representing their respective countries or professional sports clubs.

Countries usually participating in European championships. Note the difference to the geographical borders of Europe.

In the plural, the European Championships also refers to a specific combined quadrennial multi-sport event featuring the continental championships for athletics, aquatics, artistic gymnastics, triathlon, rowing, cycling and team golf.

Since European championships are usually open for teams or individual athletes from countries which are members of European sports organisations and some member countries are only partly or not at all situated in the European continent, some non-Europeans also usually take part in these championships. Traditionally, sports teams from Cyprus, Israel, Malta, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan - all geographically outside Europe - are included in European competitions for cultural and political reasons, while trans-continental countries Russia and Turkey (which straddle Europe and Asia), and technically Iceland (which sits on a continental fault line in the Atlantic ocean) also compete in Europe. In soccer, under UEFA., the Asian country of Kazakhstan also competes in European competition for historical reasons.