Football stadium will no longer host Euro 2028 fixtures as costs soar to '£400m'
The 2028 European Championship will be played in nine stadiums instead of the planned ten after one venue city was dropped.
UEFA EURO 2028 is due to be played across the British Isles, with host cities in England, Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland.
Glasgow's Hampden Park, Cardiff's Principality Stadium and the Aviva Stadium in Dublin will all be on the schedule alongside six of the leading facilities in England.
Tottenham Hotspur Stadium will host major summer tournament matches for the first time, with Wembley Stadium also bringing European Championship matches back to London.
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The new Everton stadium at Bramley Moore Dock and Manchester City's Etihad Stadium will also have games. The sextet is completed by a pair of English football's famous old grounds, St James' Park in Newcastle and Villa Park, home of Aston Villa.
The five Premier League stadiums and four national venues will not be joined by Belfast's Casement Park, which was due to be Northern Ireland's sole stadium at EURO 2028 with Windsor Park not meeting UEFA requirements.
Back in September, the UK government announced that the expected cost of redeveloping the stadium had soared and the taxpayer would not be footing the bill.
"The estimated build costs have risen dramatically – from £180m when the EURO 2028 bid was awarded in October 2023 to potentially over £400m – and there is a significant risk that it would not be built in time for the tournament," said Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn and Sports Minister Lisa Nandy in a letter to Northern Ireland's Communities Minister, Gordon Lyons.
"We have therefore, regrettably, decided that it is not appropriate for the UK government to provide funding to seek to build Casement Park in time to host matches at EURO 2028."
The project to develop the site, which has been derelict since 2013, was subsequently abandoned. As a result, Belfast is no longer a host city for the European Championship.
Casement Park has been out of use since it stopped hosting gaelic games in anticipation of earmarked redevelopment that never came.
Local residents successfully opposed plans for a 34,000-seater stadium in 2014 and the site has remained shuttered ever since.
The ground is owned by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), which last year declined to add to its already agreed investment of £15m.
Lyons reaffirmed the Communities Department's commitment to delivering a GAA stadium, which was originally signed in 2011.
Chris Nee