Germany picked by UEFA to host 2029 European Championship in women's soccer

NYON, Switzerland (AP) — Germany will host the 2029 European Championship in women's soccer, promising record revenue and attendances to drive forward the game's development on and off the field.

UEFA voted overwhelmingly Wednesday for the Germany bid in a three-candidate contest and opted for the promise of financial results and sporting potential with the national team playing in sold-out stadiums in Munich and Dortmund.

Germany’s eight-city project for an expected 16-team, 31-game Women’s Euros beat Poland and a co-hosting bid by Denmark and Sweden.

UEFA executive committee members gave 15 votes to Germany, two to the Scandinavians and none to Poland.

UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin said it was “heartbreaking” that any of the three bids should lose before he pulled Germany’s name out of the envelope to announce the winner.

A large German soccer federation delegation posed for team photos at UEFA headquarters then all pulled on white national-team jerseys with the number 29 on the front.

“With all the stadiums we have now I think it is very exciting to see and to play there,” said Germany goalkeeper Ann-Katrin Berger, who came to Switzerland to back the bid directly from Madrid where she played Tuesday evening in the Women’s Nations League final.

This latest German win means that within a generation, from 2006 to 2029, the country will have hosted men’s and women’s World Cups for FIFA and men’s and women’s Euros for UEFA.

Switzerland set a tournament record attendance hosting a popular and successful Euro 2025 in July with total crowds of more than 650,000 at an average of 21,000 per game.

Germany expects to draw more than one million spectators in its much bigger stadiums also in Cologne, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Hanover, Leipzig and Wolfsburg.

“We think we can fill the stadiums because women’s football has had such a great development in the last few years,” German bid leader Heike Ullrich said.

A German-hosted Women’s Euros can aim to make a profit after UEFA budgeted to subsidize the more intimate Swiss-hosted tournament with 25 million euros ($29.1 million).

“It is a tournament of a massive scale in ’29 that Germany can offer," UEFA director of women's soccer Nadine Kessler told The Associated Press. "That is exactly what we want to take advantage of — to properly put women’s football globally on the map.”

Euro 2029 will slot between the last 32-team Women's World Cup hosted by Brazil in 2027, and the first 48-team edition in 2031 hosted mostly in the United States.

"We will be on par with World Cups,” said Kessler, a former Germany national-team standout. “Financially but also sportingly, all these prejudices we have been facing for many, many years I think they will be wiped away by ’29.”

The Denmark-Sweden bid offered a similar level of sold-out smaller stadiums while Poland looked to speed its progress toward being a women’s soccer power in Europe.

With the Women's Euros expected to be a 24-team tournament in future, Germany also was seen as a safe bet after that expansion which would be a greater challenge to the other bidders Wednesday.

Sweden and Denmark narrowly lost a hosting vote for the 2025 edition to a surprise Swiss win when their bid had been joined by Finland and Norway in a more scattered four-nation Nordic project.

“It is hard to think about that right now,” Swedish soccer federation president Simon Åström said about a possible third straight bid for 2033 which likely will be for 24 teams. “We believed we had a very strong bid but we also know the competition this time was very tough.”

It is unclear if UEFA could yet fast-track that expansion for the 2029 edition in Germany.

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

The tournament trophy is on displayed after Germany was selected to host the 2029 Women's European Championship soccer tournament during a ceremony at UEFA Headquarters, Wednesday, Dec 3, 2025 in Nyon, Switzerland. (Cyril Zingaro/Keystone via AP)

UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin, left, and German Football Association (DFB) president Bernd Neuendorf, right, shake hands during the the announcement ceremony for the host country of the UEFA Women's EURO 2029, in Nyon, Switzerland, Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2025. (Cyril Zingaro/Keystone via AP)

The German delegation celebrates during the announcement ceremony for the host country of the UEFA Women's EURO 2029 in Nyon, Switzerland, Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2025. (Cyril Zingaro/Keystone via AP)

UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin shows the name of Germany, during the the announcement ceremony for the host country of the UEFA Women's EURO 2029, in Nyon, Switzerland, Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2025. (Cyril Zingaro/Keystone via AP)

German soccer player Vanessa Diehm poses after Germany was selected to host the 2029 Women's European Championship soccer tournament during a ceremony at UEFA Headquarters, Wednesday, Dec 3, 2025 in Nyon, Switzerland. (Cyril Zingaro/Keystone via AP)

FILE - The tournament trophy is on display at the end of the UEFA Euro 2025 European women's soccer championship final draw at the Swiss Tech Convention Centre in Lausanne, Switzerland, Monday, Dec. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump mischaracterized core elements of the U.S. economy and stretched the facts in claiming to have toppled Iran’s government as he addressed the nation Wednesday night in a time of soaring gas prices and persistent inflation.

Here's a look at some of his statements:

CLAIM: “We were a dead and crippled country after the last administration and made it the hottest country anywhere in the world by far, with no inflation.’’

THE FACTS: This is a standard Trump claim. But the economy he inherited was far from weak. In 2024, the last year of Joe Biden's presidency, American gross domestic product grew 2.8%, adjusted for inflation, faster than any wealthy country in the world except Spain. It also expanded at a healthy rate from 2021 through 2023. Last year, in fact, U.S. economic growth decelerated under Trump to a still-respectable 2.1%, partly because the 43-day federal government shutdown slashed growth from October through December.

Nor has inflation vanished. The Labor Department’s consumer price index was up 2.4% in February compared with a year earlier. It’s still above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.

CLAIM: “Regime change was not our goal. We never said regime change, but regime change has occurred because of all of their original leaders' death. They’re all dead. The new group is less radical and much more reasonable.”

THE FACTS: Trump's depiction of the people now in charge in Iran, after scores of senior leaders were killed in the war, stretches credulity.

Israel’s airstrike at the start of the war Feb. 28 killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran then installed his son, Mojtaba, who is viewed as even more hard-line, as supreme leader. The monthlong war has seen Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard grow even more ascendant. Iran's civilian leadership — broadly untouched by the war -- acknowledges it has little command and control over the Guard's actions.

Both Trump and Israel have signaled they would tell the Iranian people to rise up at a point in the war to take back their government. That hasn’t happened.

CLAIM: “This murderous regime also recently killed 45,000 of their own people who were protesting in Iran.”

THE FACTS: A death toll that high has not been verified.

The U.S.-based group Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has been accurate in multiple rounds of demonstrations in Iran, said it confirmed the deaths of just over 7,000 people in the nationwide protests that reached their apex in January. However, it said thousands more may have been killed, though internet and communication restrictions in Iran since have made verifying the reports incredibly difficult. It put total arrests at more than 53,000.

Iran’s government, which long has played down death tolls in other unrest, offered its only toll on Jan. 21, saying 3,117 people were killed.

Trump previously said that at least 32,000 people were killed in January protests, which is at the far end of estimates offered by activists for the death toll. He offered no evidence to support those figures.

This is how the AP reports on the death toll from Iran’s protests.

CLAIM: “We’re now totally independent of the Middle East, and yet we are there to help. We don’t have to be there. We don’t need their oil.’’

THE FACTS: It’s true that the United States is by far the world’s leading producer of oil and relies on the Persian Gulf for a fraction (8.5% in 2025) of the oil it imports. But, as is obvious at U.S. gas pumps, that doesn’t mean it is unaffected by the turmoil in the Middle East.

Oil is a commodity, “the price of which is set in a global market,’’ University of Chicago energy analyst Sam Ori said before Trump’s speech, “and a disruption anywhere affects the price everywhere.’’ Which is why the price of benchmark U.S. crude oil is up more than 50% since the Iran war began, and the average price of U.S. gallon of gasoline cracked $4 a gallon this week.

CLAIM: Trump cited “record-setting setting investments coming into the United States, over $18 trillion.”

THE FACTS: Trump has presented no evidence that he’s secured this much domestic or foreign investment in the U.S. Based on statements from various companies, foreign countries and the White House’s own website, that figure appears to be exaggerated, highly speculative and far higher than the actual sum. The White House website offers a far lower number, $10.5 trillion, and that figure appears to include some investment commitments made during the Biden administration.

A study published in January raised doubts about whether more than $5 trillion in investment commitments made last year by many of America’s biggest trading partners will actually materialize and questions how it would be spent if it did.

CLAIM: “Obama gave them $1.7 billion in cash.”

THE FACTS: This misleading claim that President Barack Obama handed over cash to the Iranians dates back to Trump’s first term and persists in his second.

The U.S. treasury did pay Iran roughly that amount under Obama. But it was not a gift. Rather, it was money owed to the Iranians since the 1970s, when they paid the U.S. $400 million for military equipment that was never delivered because the government was overthrown and diplomatic relations ruptured.

After the 2015 deal to restrain Iran’s nuclear development, the U.S. and Iran announced they had settled the matter, with the U.S. agreeing to pay the $400 million principal in cash, along with about $1.3 billion in interest. Trump later took the U.S. out of the deal.

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Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

President Donald Trump gestures after speaking about the Iran war from the Cross Hall of the White House on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)

President Donald Trump speaks about the Iran war from the Cross Hall of the White House on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)