Poland Euro Cup Poland has participated in three UEFA European Championships so far: UEFA Euro 2008, UEFA Euro 2012 and UEFA Euro 2016.



While the UEFA European Football Championship was first established in 1960, it took Poland as many as 48 years to qualify, by which time they had managed to attend five FIFA World Cup finals and win third place in two of them. By the end of the Cold War, Poland were the second most populated UEFA member state to have yet to compete in a Euro tournament (the most populated being Turkey), behind quite a few of their smaller neighbors, such as Czechoslovakia or Romania. Even some of the best coaches to ever run the Poland team, namely Kazimierz Górski and Antoni Piechniczek proved unable to break the humiliating succession of defeats. In 1996, Turkey and newly independent Russia made their Euro debuts, making Poland and newly independent Ukraine the only major UEFA member states to not have qualified for a European tournament (with Poland eventually beating Ukraine to making their debut first). Overall, Poland missed twelve European tournaments before qualifying for one for a first time.



The long-awaited qualification finally came in 2008 although Poland proved disappointing, ending last in the group stage, a scenario which would be repeated four years later, though drawing against Austria, Greece and Russia. The 2012 performance was especially criticized, with many suggesting that Poland would not have even qualified for the tournament had it not been one of the hosts. The next tournament, Euro 2016, proved historic as Poland got their first win in a European Championship with a 1–0 win over Northern Ireland and eventually made it to the quarter-finals before losing to Portugal on penalties and securing the best result for the Poland team since their well-remembered third place at the 1982 FIFA World Cup.



