Two out of the five gold medals will be decided on a Saturday, and that’s something you don’t often see in the world of badminton, other than the Olympics, as Saturdays are usually reserved for the semifinals. And at the 2026 European Championships, we will see the winners of the women’s doubles and mixed doubles categories decided.

In the women’s doubles final, we will see Stoeva sisters, Stefani and Gabriela from Bulgaria go up against Turkish 2024 European Championships’ bronze medalists, Bengisu Ercetin and Nazlican Inci. Stefani and Gabriela come through Ukrainian pair, Polina Buhrova and Yevheniia Kantemyr in dominant fashion with a scoreline of 21-12 and 21-3 whilst Bengisu and Nazlican dispatched Danish European Championships debutant medalists, Kathrine Vang and Mette Werge, 21-17 and 21-10. 

The Stoeva sisters do have a 13-0 head-to-head record against the Turks and will be keen to extend that record even further.

For the other final, we will see Danes Mathias Christiansen and Alexandra Boje go up against the English pair Callum Hemming and Estelle Van Leeuwen. Callum and Estelle have been on a huge run this week, beating the 1st and 3rd seeded pairs and the last two winners of the European Championships. Callum and Estelle had beaten French top seeds in their first match and then beaten last year’s winners, Jesper Toft and Amalie Magelund from Denmark. The English pair managed to end Jesper and Amalie’s title defence in straight sets with a scoreline of 23-21 and 21-17. It will be interesting for the younger English pair to go up against the established Danes, who will also be out to claim their first European Championships, especially with Mathias, who already has 5 European Championship medals himself. It would be a little history for both pairs, as we will have a new winner in the mixed doubles category.

The remaining three categories will see the men’s singles, women’s singles, and men’s doubles decide who will earn the right to compete for the title come Sunday in Huelva, Spain. 

In the men’s singles, we’ll see the Popov brothers from France, Toma and Christo, going up against each other, in a repeat of the recent German Open final just a few weeks ago whilst the other semi-final will see top-seeded Dane, Anders Antonsen, take on Arnaud Merkle, who produced an upset in the all French quarterfinal match against last year’s winner, Alex Lanier. It was a thriller, three sets, where the teammates went toe to toe for over 75 minutes, and Arnaud came out on top. Anders and Arnaud’s head-to-head currently stands at 2-0 to Anders, and it would be interesting to see if Arnaud can come out of the gates as hard as he did against Alex.

For women’s singles, we will see defending champion, Line Kjærsfeldt, go up against eternal rival and countrywoman, Mia Blichfeldt. Line and Mia both came through Amalie Schulz and Polina Buhrova, respectively, in the quarterfinals. Line and Mia have always been trading places as the Danish number 1 over the years, and this will be a spicy one! The other women’s singles semifinals will see Scotland’s Kirsty Gilmour go up against Neslihan Arin of Turkey. This will be Kirsty’s seventh European Championship medal secured, and she will be going all in in her quest for that elusive gold. Neslihan on the other hand will be keen to upgrade the colour of her medal after already having three bronzes in the last five editions of European Championships.

Moving on to our final category, the men’s doubles. The defending champions, Toma and Christo Popov, will be facing on-form Englishmen, Alex Green and Zach Russ, who stunned Danish top seeds, Kim Astrup and Anders Skaarup Rasmussen. As the Popov brothers will be playing their men’s singles semi-finals at 2 pm local time, it will be a race against the clock to recover as soon as possible to prepare for this doubles match. The other semifinals will see second seeds Englishmen, Ben Lane and Sean Vendy take on the sole remaining Danish representative, Mads Vestergaard and Daniel Lundgaard. Ben and Sean have their eyes locked on earning a gold medal for this European Championships and will have to find a way to navigate the power and skill of the Danish pair.

It is going to be incredibly exciting. Do join us live, you can follow all the action on TV (TV stations showing the 2026 European Championships HERE or livestream on www.badmintoneurope.tv, as well as the livescore ticker on www.badmintoneurope.com.

See you there!