UEFA drops net-zero target in ‘strategy upgrade’
Long read: A shift from targets to measurement that raises questions about ambition and accountability
Summary
UEFA’s Sustainability Strategy “2026 upgrade” marks a shift in how it approaches sustainability in European football. It strengthens measurement and the management of activity, but weakens ambition by removing a crucial long-term net-zero target, without replacing it with an equivalent quantified end-point.
Beneath the language of “impact performance”, the strategy repositions UEFA from setting clear a decarbonisation destination to providing guidance, coordination and advocacy within a more club-centred model.
The result is a strategy that is more operationally structured, but less clearly aligned with delivering emissions reductions at the scale required. Without a defined end-state, a gap emerges between improved measurement and the system-level direction needed to drive meaningful climate outcomes.
Introduction
UEFA has published an update to its 2021 Sustainability Strategy, described as a “2026 Upgrade”. In practice, it incrementally improves how sustainability is operationally tracked and delivered, but weakens what it is ultimately trying to achieve.
The clearest illustration of this shift is the change to its core emissions target. The analysis below first examines that change, before placing it in the context of UEFA’s broader strategic repositioning and governance context, and then considers alternative approaches and their implications.
Net zero target
While the strategy makes no explicit reference to a change in target or its rationale, a consequential shift has taken place. The 2021 strategy committed UEFA to:
“Cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030 – in view of achieving net zero carbon by 2040 within UEFA, across UEFA events, and collaboratively across European football.”
The 2026 version now states UEFA will:
“Accelerate action on the road to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50% within UEFA and across UEFA events, and advocate action across European football.”
The removal of the 2040 net-zero target from the strategy is a material shift. It removes a clear defined outcome and replaces it with process, weakening alignment with wider transitions, including the EU’s 2050 climate neutrality goal and its proposed 2040 trajectory.
Without a clearly articulated destination, this risks becoming a rolling programme of initiatives - activity without a defined end-point or accountability. Even if UEFA were to restate or locate such a target elsewhere, its absence from the core strategy would still raise questions about how it informs priorities, decisions and accountability in practice.
This is a prime example of what Net Zero Tracker has described as a “Schrödinger’s Net Zero Target”, where commitments appear intact from the outside but, on closer inspection, no longer operate in their original form. It also runs counter to a broader trend of organisations strengthening, rather than diluting, net-zero commitments - making UEFA’s shift more conspicuous, not less. (see here and here).
The absence of the target in the strategy also creates tension with its position in the UN Sports for Climate Action Framework, which includes a net-zero-by-2040 commitment. UEFA may remain a signatory and argue that this commitment still stands at a framework level. However, strategies are the primary mechanism through which such commitments are operationalised. Omitting the target from the strategy therefore raises legitimate questions about how that ambition translates into UEFA’s priorities and decisions1.
This signal is likely to be interpreted differently across clubs and national associations. Clubs leading on net-zero may continue on their current trajectory. However, for others - particularly those at earlier stages or without a net-zero target - it removes a source of central direction and weakens the collective signal. In a system shaped by norms as well as regulation, such shifts can influence the pace and consistency of progress.
To understand how this position has emerged - and how it might have been handled differently - it is first necessary to place the strategy in the context of wider developments within UEFA.
UEFA’s Strategic Repositioning
UEFA frames the strategy as a shift from “ambition to impact…[and] an accelerated move from aims to outcomes, designed to maximise positive impact”. At its core, this reflects a repositioning of UEFA’s role within a football ecosystem of clubs, national associations, commercial partners and other stakeholders.
In practice, this marks a move away from UEFA acting as a body that sets direction and holds the system to account, toward one that convenes, supports and influences.
From authority to advocacy
The language shift is telling: the original strategy’s emphasis on “working collaboratively” to UEFA-set targets gives way to “advocating action”. Progress is no longer anchored in clear, centrally defined end-points, but in alignment across a diverse set of actors. UEFA is moving from transition architect to transition facilitator - focusing on coordination rather than direction. This may reflect the practical limits of its authority as it sees it within a more club-centric system, including evolving legal and governance constraints. However, it also leaves a gap: facilitation can enable progress, but does not by itself define the level or pace of change required.
This shift is also reflected in the October 2025 Sustainability Cooperation Plan agreed between UEFA and European Football Clubs (EFC), the body representing leading clubs. The plan formalises co-delivery and shared agenda-setting, focusing on supporting clubs, scaling practices and sharing knowledge. The emphasis is on enabling existing actions rather than defining system-wide limits, requirements or targets.
While EFC’s sustainability work is evolving, it has so far focused more on implementation of existing commitments and sharing practice than on defining impact targets for clubs - reinforcing the shift away from centrally defined outcomes.
At one level, this shift by UEFA reflects a pragmatic recognition of where operational control and influence over emissions largely sit: with clubs. But it also reflects a broader evolution in governance, in which EFC has assumed an increasingly central role alongside UEFA through long-term agreements, joint commercial structures and co-decision-making on key aspects of European club competitions.
Limits of the current model
The implication is clear: advocacy is not the same as authority. It places greater reliance on voluntary alignment in a system where incentives are not always aligned with emissions reduction, and where mechanisms to shift those incentives remain limited. Authority sets direction and can enforce accountability; advocacy relies more on alignment and voluntary action.
This is reflected in UEFA’s commitment to “develop guidelines to help member associations, other football organisations and clubs develop, implement and communicate their own sustainability approach”.
While UEFA retains the lever of club licensing criteria, these have so far been applied in a relatively light-touch, process-focused way on sustainability, emphasising the establishment of organisational sustainability roles and strategies across national associations and clubs. This represents a meaningful step in embedding sustainability within football’s structures. However, the updated strategy shows limited indication of how this approach might now evolve toward more outcome-driven requirements. In a more club-centric system, utilising this licensing mechanism remains one of the few routes to translate strategy into binding expectations aligned with emissions reduction.
The result is a strategy that reflects what is perceived by UEFA as achievable within football’s governance and commercial realities: more operationally structured, but constrained by the distribution of power and incentives within the game.
Alternative approaches to net-zero
The removal of the net-zero target sits within this broader strategic reset. Alternative approaches to a net-zero target were available.
An organisational net-zero target
The removal of the net-zero target is especially notable given UEFA’s narrow emissions boundary - focused on its own operations and selected events, and excluding major sources such as spectator travel from club tournament finals.
In that context, maintaining an organisational net-zero target would not have required system-wide transformation. While delivery would still involve complexity and reputational risk, particularly around major events, it would have remained within UEFA’s control and influence and provided a clear directional signal within its limited emissions boundary.
For example, UEFA could have committed to aligning its operations and events with a 1.5°C-consistent pathway, reaching organisational net zero by 2040, while making clear that wider decarbonisation requires additional commitments from clubs, leagues and associations.
Removing an end-target does not simplify delivery so much as reduce accountability. UEFA may argue that improved data and tools justify a shift toward implementation over target-setting. However, these advances also make it more feasible - not less - to define and track progress against a clear destination.
Reinstate a net-zero target for football
The simplest approach would be to reinstate the target, either in its original form or reworded to reflect UEFA’s shift toward advocacy. However, reinstating the 2040 target or tweaking its wording would not be sufficient on its own.
I have previously suggested in this newsletter that the UN Sports for Climate Action Framework target was based more on ambition than detailed sectoral analysis, reflecting the period in which it was set. In that respect, UEFA is right to move beyond aspiration and take stock four years on from its original target and strategy.
A credible alternative could have been to retain 2040 as a guiding reference point for UEFA’s own footprint, while committing - by a fixed date - to develop a quantified, football-wide decarbonisation pathway clarifying roles, milestones and trade-offs.
An evidence-based pathway for football
UEFA’s approach has included stakeholder consultation. This is necessary but not sufficient. A critical stage appears to have been skipped: a clearly articulated, evidence-based analysis of where European football stands and where it needs to get to. While such analysis may exist internally, its absence from the strategy makes it difficult to assess whether current actions align with the scale of change required.
I have previously argued for a robust, system-wide quantified analysis to underpin a clear decarbonisation pathway for football. This could include defining the scale of the challenge, the roles of different actors, dependencies, the distribution of power and incentives across the system, including beyond it, and the trade-offs required.
That step - turning fragmented progress into a coherent, system-wide pathway grounded in analysis - is absent, but critical. It would align with a broader trend of recalibrating net-zero commitments through greater rigour rather than retreat. Given its convening role, data access and regulatory influence, UEFA is a natural candidate to lead or commission this work. If UEFA’s absence in this space continues the question becomes who if anyone will assume that role?
Summary
Taken together, these shifts point to a strategy that is more managerial in how change is organised, but less clear - and less demanding - on the scale required. By moving away from collaborative targets toward shared advocacy, UEFA is, in effect, stepping back from setting system-wide direction at precisely the moment greater alignment with science is needed.
The removal of the net zero target makes this clear: not simply as a technical adjustment, but as a signal. In a sector with global visibility and cultural influence, targets do not just guide internal action - they shape expectations, norms and ambition across the game and beyond. Without that signal, the risk is weaker accountability and a broader softening of what football understands as its responsibility in the transition to a low-carbon future.
In the absence of clear outcome targets, UEFA’s vision of “impact performance” risks becoming a measure of activity rather than outcomes, particularly where no quantified end-state defines success. Measurement is most effective when anchored to defined end-points; without that anchor, it risks becoming self-referential rather than directional.
If UEFA is no longer prepared to define what a Paris-aligned pathway for European football looks like, the question is who will - and whether they will have the legitimacy, tools and urgency to do so. If UEFA or no other actor steps forward with both authority and ambition, the risk is not just slower progress, but a transition shaped by fragmented and ultimately insufficient action in football.
A further section below takes a look at additional points in relation to the revised strategy.
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Additional considerations
2030 Target
The weakening of ambition is not limited to the removal of the net zero target. The 2030 framing has also shifted - from a clear commitment to a more open-ended call to “accelerate action on the road to”. While subtle, this reduces precision and accountability. Taken together, the softened 2030 and 2040 framings mark a step back from time-bound, outcome-based governance toward a looser, activity-based model.
KPIs
Many of the new ‘impact performance’ metrics represent incremental evolution rather than step-change. In several cases, they formalise processes already adopted by leading clubs and competitions. This reinforces the sense that the strategy is catching up operationally rather than setting ambition. At the same time, the metrics are evolving faster than the underlying ambition - a marker of a strategy optimising what is easiest to count rather than what is hardest, but most necessary, to change.
Partners
Many of UEFA’s major commercial partners position themselves as climate leaders, with net-zero targets, science-based 2030 pathways and roles in global climate alliances. Against that backdrop, UEFA’s decision to drop its own net-zero framing creates an awkward contrast: sponsors are tightening and progressing their trajectories while UEFA is softening its long-term signal. This risks diluting the credibility of joint campaigns and creating tension with partners whose strategies depend on clear defined outcomes UEFA no longer provides.
In addition, the strategy does not engage with growing scrutiny of high-carbon sponsorships, including calls from the UN Secretary-General to restrict or ban fossil fuel advertising. This highlights a wider gap between UEFA’s climate positioning and the commercial structures that underpin the game.
Adaptation
The strategy remains focused primarily on mitigation, with limited attention to adaptation and resilience. Given the increasing physical risks facing football - from extreme heat to flooding - this is a notable gap. Recent European analysis highlights the urgency of coordinated adaptation planning. A future-proof strategy would pair mitigation with a clear adaptation standard for competitions and infrastructure, including extreme heat protocols, facility resilience and climate-related disruption to calendars.
A bottom-up approach and capital allocation
The strategy introduces concepts such as a more “bottom-up” approach and targeted capital allocation, but provides limited detail on how these will operate or be measured. Without clearer mechanisms and criteria for prioritisation against climate outcomes, these risk remaining high-level principles rather than actionable levers - more narrative than genuine drivers of change.
Mitigation hierarchy
A further gap is the absence of a clear mitigation hierarchy - how reductions are prioritised between cutting emissions at source, substituting activities, and only then considering compensation. This matters in practice. UEFA has already pointed to solutions such as Sustainable Aviation Fuel, which may play a role in aviation emissions. However, without a defined hierarchy, there is a risk of prioritising high-profile or technologically appealing options over demand reduction or structural change.
A credible approach would also clarify how residual emissions - those that cannot be eliminated - are minimised and addressed. The new strategy emphasises measurement, but not how actions are prioritised. The result is a framework in which visible interventions risk being treated as equivalent to deeper emissions cuts - reinforcing a shift from outcomes to activity.
Final note
This analysis focuses on the climate dimension of UEFA’s sustainability strategy and does not address other important areas that warrant equal attention, including anti-racism, football for all abilities, and solidarity and rights.
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Fran James (he/him)
Football and Climate Change Newsletter
info@footballandclimate.org
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Looking back to UEFA’s Carbon Reduction Plan released in June 2025, we can see the foreshadowing of the dropping of the net-zero target in 1) the omission of the 2040 target in that plan 2) the vague reference to a ‘Road to Zero’ and 3) links in the document to UEFA sites that do not mention the 2040 target.