Cologne

With around 1.1 million inhabitants, Cologne is the largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia and the fourth largest in Germany. The city on the Rhine is the centre of the Rhineland metropolitan region with around nine million inhabitants.

The city is one of the most important travel destinations in Europe, mainly because of the important Cologne Cathedral and its Romanesque churches as well as other medieval monuments, more than 2000 years of city history, important events and its cultural and culinary heritage.

Cologne was founded by the Romans and received city rights as early as 50 AD. It is still the seat of the Archdiocese of Cologne, the largest Roman Catholic diocese in Germany. With its central traffic opportunities, Cologne has been an important trading location since Roman times. As a business and cultural metropolis, Cologne is of international importance. The city is one of the most important locations for the chemical and automotive industries and is home to the headquarters and production facilities of automotive brands such as Ford and Toyota, as well as chemical companies such as Lanxess. The carnival stronghold is also the location of many public associations and well-known sports clubs. Numerous media companies, film studios, music producers and publishing houses have their headquarters here. Cologne is also one of the leading centres of the global art trade.

The city is also an important location for congresses and trade fairs: the photo technology fair Photokina, the fitness and health fair FIBO, the confectionery fair and the video game fair Gamescom have a worldwide reputation, the Art Cologne is the oldest art fair in the world.

Thanks to the university with around 51,000 students, the Technical University of Cologne (around 27,000 students) and numerous other universities, the city is the largest educational and research location in western Germany. The importance of Cologne as a transport hub is shown by the extensive long-distance rail passenger transport with three long-distance train stations and the Eifeltor train station, which is one of the largest container handling stations in Europe. The infrastructure is supplemented by four inland ports and Cologne/Bonn Airport.

Lanxess Arena

Capacity: 19,750 spectators

Handball history: In 2007 and 2019, the Arena was the scene of the IHF Men’s World Championships - in 2007 with the final round that went down in handball history as the “German winter fairy tale”, in 2019 with the main round and the President's Cup. Besides, the EHF Champions League FINAL4 has been held here every year since 2010.

Matches EHF EURO 2024: main round and final weekend

Henriette Reker, Lord Mayor of Cologne: "Cologne is looking forward to the EHF EURO 2024. The memories of the winter fairy tale of 2007 and the atmospheric World Championship games in 2019 are still present for all handball fans, not only here in Cologne. We are already looking forward to welcoming tens of thousands of handball fans from all over Europe to Cologne in 2024. For the first time, a European men's handball championship will be held in Germany and the cup will be awarded in Cologne - that makes us particularly proud and we look forward to the guests from all over Europe."