UEFA Women’s EURO 2025: Championing children’s dreams with the UEFA Foundation
As the UEFA Foundation for Children celebrates ten years of global impact, this summer’s UEFA Women’s EURO 2025 becomes a powerful platform for supporting vulnerable children.
During the past decade, the foundation has made significant contributions to improving conditions for disadvantaged children across the world. Established in 2015, it has supported 577 projects across 138 countries and reached nearly 5 million people.
These efforts have promoted children’s rights and used football as a positive catalyst for improvement in areas such as health, education, personal development, inclusion and employability.
The work of the UEFA Foundation for Children sends a strong message that millions of children around the world need help, and we must not leave them behind. It goes beyond UEFA’s deep commitment to social responsibility – it is about standing up for the most vulnerable and using football as a catalyst to inspire and empower them. We’ve reached almost five million children living in difficult and precarious conditions in just ten years. We are proud of the global impact made, but we see it only as a beginning.
- Aleksander Čeferin, UEFA president
Bringing the game to vulnerable children
To mark its milestone birthday, the foundation has launched a range of initiatives around this summer's UEFA Women’s EURO.
The 2025 Smiles programme sees a total of 2025 match tickets given to associations working with vulnerable children in the host cities. The player mascots and ball carriers for the group stage matches in Sion, St. Gallen and Thun are a mix of disabled children, orphans from Ukraine and children from disadvantaged social backgrounds in Switzerland.
Furthermore, matches in Basel, Bern, Geneva and Zurich will feature robots that allow children in hospital to see and interact with players as they arrive at the stadium. After the final ball has been kicked, the Foundation will provide long-term support for organisations promoting gender equality through sport, working in cooperation with the adidas Foundation, the Kaizen Foundation, the FIA Foundation and NGOs in the 16 participating countries.
Involving children in the final is just one of the many ways the UEFA Foundation for Children puts young people at the heart of its work.
We must remain focused on the needs of our beneficiaries and keep them at the centre of everything we do. Sports, especially football, have the power to bring communities together, promote health and teach valuable life skills.
- Carine N'koué, general secretary of the UEFA Foundation for Children