The inaugural edition in 2018 was staged by the host cities of Berlin, Germany and Glasgow, United Kingdom between 2 and 12 August.

European Championships Management, co-founded by Paul Bristow and Marc Joerg, developed the event concept, and manages and implements the European Championships on behalf of the participating Federations.

[3][4][5] The second edition saw aquatics and golf remove themselves from the programme, while canoe sprint and paracanoe, sports climbing, beach volleyball, table tennis and rowing joined the event.

[12][13] The initial participating continental governing bodies, and championships, were: The European Broadcasting Union (EBU),[14] the umbrella body for the continent's free-to-air channels, was the broadcast partner for the combined championships, which were expected to generate more than 2700 hours of programming.

[15] All of Europe's major free-to-air broadcasters televised the European Championships in 2018,[16][17] such as BBC in the United Kingdom, ARD/ZDF in Germany, France Televisions in France, RAI in Italy and TVE in Spain.

Other EBU members who signed up include VRT (Belgium), HRT (Croatia), DR (Denmark), YLE (Finland), RTÉ (Ireland), NOS (Netherlands), NRK (Norway), TVP (Poland), SRG SSR (Switzerland) and SVT/TV4 (Sweden).

It was presented by Katherine Grainger, Emma Fredh and Angelina Melnikova on behalf of the seven European federations involved in the event.

The participating European Sports Federations were expected to announce the 2022 hosts after the first edition in August 2018.

The European Championships Trophy, one of the unifying elements of the multi-sport event, is awarded to the nation that finishes top of the overall medal table featuring all participating sports.