Lithuania qualified as hosts while Spain, Serbia and Turkey received byes to the elite round as the sides with the highest coefficients.
[1] A total of forty-eight participating teams were divided in two draw pots based on the UEFA Under-19 coefficient ranking.
Before the draw UEFA confirmed that, for political reasons, Armenia and Azerbaijan would not host the mini-tournament if they are drawn in the same group due to the dispute concerning territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, with the same rule applying for Georgia and Russia due to the dispute regarding the territory of South Ossetia.
If two or more teams are equal on points on completion of the group matches, the following criteria are applied to determine the rankings.
[3] Additionally, if two teams which have the same number of points and the same number of goals scored and conceded play their last group match against each other and are still equal at the end of that match, their final rankings are determined by the penalty shoot-out and not by the criteria listed above.