A total of 16 teams played in the final tournament, and only players born on or after 1 January 2000 were eligible to participate.

Besides France, which qualified automatically as Olympic hosts, eligible teams competed for qualifying (3 berths) for the men's football tournament of the 2024 Summer Olympics, where they will be represented by their under-23 national teams with a maximum of three overage players allowed.

They became the first team to win the UEFA European Under-21 Championship without conceding a single goal in the entire tournament.

[9] The two countries were appointed as co-hosts at the UEFA Executive Committee meeting on 3 December 2020.

The teams were seeded according to their coefficient ranking following the end of the qualifying stage, calculated based on the following:[2] The hosts Romania and Georgia were assigned to positions A1 and B1, respectively, while the remaining fourteen teams were drawn to the other available positions in their group.

[2] As England is not an IOC member and France did not reach the semi-finals, all other semi-finalists qualified for the 2024 Summer Olympics regardless of results.