The draw for the qualifying rounds was held on 3 February 2011 in Nyon, with matches played between March 2011 and September 2012.
A total of fifty-two participating teams were divided in five draw pots based on the UEFA Under-21 coefficient ranking.
Before the draw UEFA confirmed that, for political reasons, Armenia would not be drawn against Azerbaijan (due to the dispute concerning territory of Nagorno-Karabakh) and Georgia would not be drawn against Russia (due to the dispute regarding the territory of South Ossetia) in the qualifiers for 2013 UEFA European Under–21 Football Championship.
[2] The draw for the play-offs was held on 14 September 2012 in Nyon to determine the seven pairings as well as the order of the home and away ties.
[3][4] Each nation's coefficient was generated by calculating:[2] The seedings are as follows: The top scorers in the 2013 UEFA European Under-21 Championship qualification were as follows.