The 2023–24 UEFA Women's Nations League C was the third and lowest division of the 2023–24 edition of the UEFA Women's Nations League, the inaugural season of the international football competition involving the women's national teams of the member associations of UEFA. The results were used to determine the leagues for the UEFA Women's Euro 2025 qualifying competition.
Format
League C consisted of the bottom 19 UEFA members ranked 33rd to 51st among competition entrants in the UEFA women's national team coefficient ranking. Teams were split into four groups of four (Groups 1 to 4) and one group of three (Group 5). Each team played four (three-team group) or six (four-team groups) matches within their group, using the home-and-away round-robin format with double matchdays in September, October and November to December 2023.[1] The competition also acted as the first phase of the preliminary competition for UEFA Women's Euro 2025, which uses an identical league structure. The group winners were promoted to League B, taking effect in UEFA Women's Euro 2025 qualifying. In addition, the three best-ranked League C runners-up advanced to the promotion play-offs against the three best-ranked third-placed teams in League B. The winners of these home-and-away ties entered League B for UEFA Women's Euro 2025 qualifying, while the losers entered League C.[2]
Seeding
Teams were allocated to League C according to their UEFA women's national team coefficient after the conclusion of the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup qualifying group stage on 6 September 2022. Teams were split into three pots of five teams (Pots 1 to 4) and one pot of four teams (Pot 5), ordered based on their UEFA national team coefficient.[3]
The draw for the league phase took place at the UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland in May 2023, 13:00 CEST.[4] Groups 1 to 4 contained one team from each pot, while Group 5 contained one team from Pots 1 to 3. The draw started with Pot 1 and ended with Pot 4, with drawn teams assigned to the first available group in ascending order from C1 to C5. Due to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Armenia and Azerbaijan could not be drawn in the same group. Due to winter venue restrictions, a group could contain a maximum of two of Estonia, the Faroe Islands, Latvia and Lithuania. Due to excessive travel restrictions, only one of Andorra, the Faroe Islands and Malta could be drawn with Kazakhstan.[5]
Source: UEFA Rules for classification: Tiebreakers - not considering results against teams ranked fourth in each group
Overall ranking
The 19 League C teams were ranked 33rd to 51st overall in the 2023–24 UEFA Women's Nations League according to the following rules:[2]
The teams finishing first in their groups were ranked 33rd to 37th according to the results of the league phase.
The teams finishing second in their groups were ranked 38th to 42nd according to the results of the league phase.
The teams finishing third in their groups were ranked 43rd to 47th according to the results of the league phase.
The teams finishing fourth in their groups were ranked 48th to 51st according to the results of the league phase.
Due to League C being composed of different sized groups, the results against the fourth-placed teams were not taken into account when comparing teams finishing first, second, and third in their groups.[2]