The event was the last chance for European gymnasts to qualify a quota to compete at thedelayed 2020 Summer Olympics, with one individual quota and one group quota available. It also, for the first time, served as a qualification event for country quotas at the2021 World Championships.[2] The Olympic quotas were won byFanni Pigniczki and the group representing Ukraine.[3]
Due to the ongoingCOVID-19 pandemic, all persons involved in the event were required to undergo tests for Covid, and the arena was restricted to 50 percent of its total capacity.[4]
Russian gymnasts dominated the event, winning over a third of the available medals and nine of the twelve titles.Arina Averina won the all-around, her second European title after the2018 European Championships, and was joined on the podium by her twin sister,Dina Averina, who won bronze and also won three of the apparatus finals. The silver medalist,Boryana Kaleyn, won Bulgaria's first European all-around medal in more than twenty years, sinceMaria Petrova won the1994 European Championships. The previous year's European champion,Linoy Ashram, was in fourth place in the all-around but won the clubs final, the first time since the2011 European Championships that a non-Russian gymnast won a European apparatus final.[3]
Rachel Stoyanov, representing North Macedonia, won the "Shooting Star" award.[3]
Each member nation ofEuropean Gymnastics could send either two or three individual gymnasts, who could perform a maximum of eight routines between them in the qualification round; a gymnast's three highest scores were used to determine qualification to the all-around final. The eight gymnasts (maximum two per country) with the highest scores per apparatus in the qualification round advanced to the apparatus final. Each member nation could also send a senior and a junior group. Each country's senior entrants formed a team, with the scores of all individual and group routines in the qualification round being added to determine team rankings.[5]
37 countries entered 321 gymnasts in the competition.[5] The countries participating in the competition were:[6]