Yerevan to stage 2024 UEFA Futsal Champions League finals in May

Karen Dermichyan Arena in Yerevan will stage the 2024 UEFA Futsal Champions League finals after the UEFA Executive Committee appointed the Football Federation of Armenia as hosts.

The finals are a four-team knockout event played between the teams that won November's elite round mini-tournaments: holders Mallorca Palma Futsal and fellow former winners Barça, Benfica and Sporting CP. The semi-final draw was on Thursday 14 March in the Red Hall of Karen Dermichyan Arena, will split the four teams into two ties to be played on Friday 3 May, with the final and third-place play-off two days later.

The 6,900-capacity Karen Dermichyan Arena first opened in 1983 and was revamped in 2008. It has staged a wide variety of sporting events and concerts from ice hockey and boxing to the Chess Olympiad and Junior Eurovision. It will be the first major futsal finals in Armenia, which staged football's U19 EURO in 2019 in Yerevan.

Yerevan will be the third neutral venue for the finals of this competition after Zadar, Croatia – a one-off eight-team event due to COVID in 2021 – and Riga, Latvia (2022). Zaragoza was the venue in 2018 when jointly hosted by Barça and Madrid-based Spanish rivals Inter FS.

Other host cities since the introduction of the four-team finals have been Murcia (2007), Moscow (2008), Ekaterinburg (2009), Lisbon (2010 and 2015), Almaty (2011, 2017 and 2019), Lleida (2012), Tbilisi (2013), Baku (2014), Guadalajara (2016), Barcelona (2020) and Palma de Mallorca (2023). Lisbon also hosted an eight-team final tournament in 2002 to conclude the inaugural season, with the next four editions decided by two-legged finals.