For the eighth year running, a complex of venues in Nazaré, Portugal, hosted – comprising the Estádio do Viveiro (a semi-permanent feature stadium), and rudimentary auxiliary pitches.
Following a preliminary qualification round, the event began with a round robin group stage. At its conclusion, the best teams progressed to the knockout stage, a series of single elimination games to determine the winners, starting with the Round of 16 and ending with the final. Consolation matches were also played to determine other final rankings.
Kfar Qassem of Israel were the defending champions,[10] but were eliminated in the quarterfinals, ultimately placing fifth. Braga of Portugal won the tournament, claiming their fourth European crown;[11] they defeated Pisa of Italy in the final, condemning the Tuscans to a consecutive runners-up finish.[12]
Qualification for the competition is similar to the UEFA Champions League, whereby clubs qualify via their country’s national beach soccer league (being a country which is a member association of UEFA).
The exact number of clubs which qualify from each association depends on the perceived "strength" of their country’s league. BSWW determine the strength of each league by analysing the performance of all clubs in the EWC on a country-by-country basis over the previous five editions; a points-based ranking is produced from the data. From the most recent edition of their respective leagues, the best performing nations in the ranking are permitted to enter multiple top placing clubs (being their league champions and one or more runners-up), whilst the worst performing are allowed to enter just one club (being their league champions).[8][13][14] This is similar in concept to that of the UEFA coefficient ranking.
Eligible clubs may choose not to, or are unable to participate. Thus, in reality, some countries fill their quota with clubs placed lower down in their league, don’t claim all their slots, sometimes fill none of their slots at all, and sometimes unclaimed slots are transferred to other associations at the discretion of BSWW.
Any and all clubs that do not qualify via their league placing, and/or are surplus to their countries' allocated quotas, are invited to enter the accompanying Euro Winners Challenge (preliminary round) to begin in the days prior to the competition proper.[8] The Challenge is both a competition in its own right and acts as an alternative qualification route for this edition of the EWC; the semi-finals of the Challenge double as Round of 32 ties of the EWC and the Challenge final doubles as a Round of 16 tie of the EWC. The winners of the latter are crowned champions of the Challenge and are rewarded with a place in the quarter-finals of the EWC at which stage they become fully integrated with the clubs of the competition proper.
The draw to split the 36 clubs into nine groups of four, and 20 clubs into five groups of four, for the group and preliminary stages respectively, took place on 16 May.[20][21]
^"Euro Winners Cup 2015 to be biggest yet". Beach Soccer Worldwide. 21 May 2015. Archived from the original on 3 January 2018. Retrieved 2 January 2018. and this is event [sic], which is in a similar vein as the Champions League
^"Slots - Euro Winners Cup 2022". Beach Soccer Worldwide via Beach Soccer Belgium. 25 January 2022. Archived from the original on 7 May 2022. Retrieved 7 May 2022.