Qualification for the 2004 UEFA European Championship took place between September 2002 and November 2003.

If two or more teams were equal on points on completion of the group matches, the following criteria were applied to determine the rankings: The draw occurred on 25 January 2002 in Santa Maria da Feira, Portugal.

[4][5] The seeding list was however subject to some few minor modifications:[6][7][8] Ten groups were formed by drawing one team from each of the five pots.

[2][3] Note: The UEFA National Team Coefficient ranking automatically had taken into account in its ranking calculation, that some teams only played one of the two preceding qualification tournaments.

France had also qualified automatically for the 2002 FIFA World Cup as 1998 FIFA World Cup Champions, meaning the coefficient used only the UEFA Euro 2000 qualification record for France.