The Football Association of Wales (FAW) is delighted to announce that Cardiff has been selected to host the 2029 UEFA Women’s Champions League Final, bringing one of the biggest occasions in women’s club football to the National Stadium of Wales.
The FAW submitted a strong technical bid to UEFA, developed with the support of Welsh Government, Cardiff Council and the National Stadium of Wales. The bid demonstrated Wales’ ability to deliver a world-class UEFA Women’s Champions League Final, alongside a shared ambition to use the event to create a lasting impact for football, communities and the wider nation.
The successful bid represents another landmark moment for Welsh football and will provide a platform to accelerate the continued growth of women’s and girls’ football across Wales.
At the heart of the FAW’s bid was a commitment to ensure that hosting the final would create an impact extending far beyond the event itself and right across Wales.
Hosting the UEFA Women’s Champions League Final will build on a transformational period for the women’s game in Wales, with participation having doubled to more than 20,000 registered players, record attendances across domestic and international football, the continued development of the Genero Adran Leagues and Cymru’s historic qualification for UEFA Women’s EURO 2025.
The final will provide another opportunity to inspire a new generation of women and girls to see football as a game for them – as players, coaches, referees, volunteers, supporters and leaders.
It will also provide Wales with a global platform to showcase its football, culture, language and identity, while welcoming supporters from across Europe to the heart of the Welsh capital.
A lasting legacy for Welsh football
The FAW’s ambition is for the 2029 UEFA Women’s Champions League Final to become a catalyst for the next phase of growth in women’s and girls’ football in Wales.
A comprehensive legacy programme will begin ahead of the final and continue beyond 2029, with commitments focused on participation, facilities, the football workforce and growing the audience for the women’s game.
The programme will include ambitions to:
- Create more opportunities for girls to play football – working towards 100% of secondary schools in Wales delivering curricular and/or extracurricular football opportunities for girls, while targeting a 25% reduction in the number of teenage girls leaving the game. The programme will particularly focus on girls aged 12–16 and creating sustainable pathways between schools, communities and clubs.
- Reach more women and girls from underrepresented communities – developing opportunities in ethnically diverse communities and areas experiencing deprivation, with an ambition to increase participation among teenage girls from ethnically diverse communities by 25%. Flexible and recreational formats will also be expanded, with the aim of doubling the number of women playing recreational football.
- Create better places for women and girls to play – investing in four full-size artificial pitches across Wales with protected access for women and girls, alongside 15 female-friendly facility development projects. Through the Environments FOR HER approach, improvements will include changing facilities, toilet provision and dedicated facilities for female referees, with at least 1,000 player experiences targeted for improvement.
- Grow the female football workforce and develop future leaders – increasing the number of women volunteering across Welsh football by 25%, while creating more opportunities for women to progress into coaching, refereeing, governance and leadership positions within clubs, leagues and football organisations.
- Grow the audience for women’s football – using the profile of the UEFA Women’s Champions League Final to increase awareness and support for the Cymru Women’s National Team and the Adran Leagues. The legacy programme will target a 30% increase in Adran Leagues ticket sales and attendances, alongside increased digital engagement, media coverage and interest in the domestic game.
- Take the final across Wales – connecting communities with the event through grassroots activity, schools and club programmes, content and storytelling, fan experiences and a UEFA Women’s Champions League trophy tour, ensuring that hosting the final has an impact beyond Cardiff.
Together, these commitments are designed to ensure that the impact of the UEFA Women’s Champions League Final is felt throughout Wales and continues long after the trophy has been lifted.
A world-class stage in the heart of Cardiff
The National Stadium of Wales will provide an iconic setting for the final, located at the heart of one of Europe’s most compact and accessible capital cities.
Its city-centre location creates a distinctive major-event experience, with Cardiff Central railway station, hotels, restaurants, cultural attractions and fan activities all within easy reach of the stadium.
That compact footprint will enable supporters to experience the atmosphere of the final throughout the city and support the ambition to deliver an accessible and sustainable event.
Cardiff also has a proven record of delivering some of world sport’s biggest occasions.
The city previously welcomed the UEFA Women’s Champions League Final in 2017, when Lyon defeated Paris Saint-Germain at Cardiff City Stadium, while the National Stadium of Wales hosted the men’s UEFA Champions League Final between Real Madrid and Juventus days later.
The FAW’s 2029 bid recognised the impact that the 2017 women’s final had in inspiring women and girls across Wales. Twelve years later, the ambition is to use the return of the final to create an even greater legacy.
Wales: a home for major football events
The 2029 UEFA Women’s Champions League Final will continue an extraordinary period for Wales as a host of major international football.
Following the hosting of the UEFA European Under-19 Championship in 2026, Cardiff will welcome UEFA EURO 2028 to the National Stadium of Wales, including the opening match of the tournament and a quarter-final.
Wales could then play a significant role in hosting the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2035. The FAW has joined the Football Associations of England, Northern Ireland and Scotland in submitting the UK’s joint bid for the tournament, with Cardiff and Wrexham included among the proposed host cities. The UK is the sole bidder for the 2035 tournament, with FIFA expected to formally appoint the host later in 2026.
The UEFA Women’s Champions League Final in 2029 will therefore form part of an increasingly significant programme of major international football in Wales, further strengthening the nation’s reputation for delivering world-class events and creating meaningful legacies from them.
For the FAW, hosting the final also provides an opportunity to increase the profile of the Cymru Women’s National Team and the Adran Leagues, using storytelling, community activations, a trophy tour, grassroots events and fan experiences to connect the UEFA Women’s Champions League with football communities throughout Wales.
Showcasing Wales to the world
Thousands of supporters travelling to Cardiff will create significant opportunities for tourism and the wider Welsh economy.
Working alongside Welsh Government and partners, the event will provide a platform to showcase Wales internationally, with Welsh culture at the heart of the experience and a programme designed to increase the visibility and accessibility of women’s football.
Noel Mooney, FAW Chief Executive Officer, said: “This is about much more than one night in 2029. Our ambition is for the UEFA Women’s Champions League Final to become a catalyst for the continued transformation of women’s and girls’ football in Wales.
“We want a young girl watching the best players in Europe at the National Stadium of Wales to see a place for herself in our game – whether that is as a player, coach, referee, volunteer, supporter or future leader.
“Welsh football has made incredible progress. We have more than 20,000 women and girls playing the game, a growing domestic structure through the Adran Leagues and a Cymru team that has now competed on the major tournament stage. Bringing this final to Wales gives us another opportunity to accelerate that progress.
“The National Stadium of Wales, in the heart of Cardiff, provides a fantastic stage for one of the biggest matches in women’s club football. We want supporters travelling here from across Europe to experience not only a world-class final, but everything that makes Cymru such a distinctive football nation – our people, our culture, our language and our passion for the game.
“Most importantly, we want the legacy of 2029 to be visible for years afterwards – in better facilities, more opportunities, stronger clubs, bigger audiences and many more women and girls feeling that football belongs to them.”
Bethan Woolley, FAW Head of Women’s & Girls’ Football, said: “Hosting the UEFA Women’s Champions League Final in Wales provides us with an incredible opportunity to build on the momentum we have created across the women’s and girls’ game.
“We’ve seen significant growth in participation in recent years, but our ambition goes much further. We want to create more opportunities for women and girls to play, improve the environments and facilities they experience, strengthen pathways through the game and ensure that more women can see a place for themselves in football – whether as a player, coach, referee, volunteer or leader.
“Having some of the best players and clubs in the world competing at the National Stadium of Wales will be hugely inspirational, particularly for the next generation. Our challenge now is to harness that excitement and turn it into lasting involvement in the game.
“The real measure of success will not just be what happens on the night of the final in 2029, but the opportunities it creates for women and girls throughout Wales for many years afterwards.”
The legacy programme will be delivered by the FAW in collaboration with partners including the Cymru Football Foundation, Welsh Government, Sport Wales, Local Authorities, the Adran Leagues and grassroots clubs, ensuring that the benefits of hosting the final extend across the whole of Wales.
Further information on the 2029 UEFA Women’s Champions League Final, including ticketing, supporter activities and the nationwide legacy programme, will be announced in due course.
