It is a premiere for the stand-up paddlers. For them, it is the first European Championship under the patronage of the European Canoe Association ECA. In Szeged there will be SUP dinghy, long-distance, sprint and technical races. The first stages of the technical race will take place on Wednesday's opening day, followed by the SUP sprint heats, the quarter-finals and the semi-finals.

As at the 2023 World Championships in Duisburg, there will also be races for paracanoeists with intellectual disabilities in Szeged, which will begin on Thursday with the preliminary rounds, and on Friday the finals for the intellectually impaired paddlers and class Vl 3 will begin. The finals for the other starting classes will then take place on Saturday and Sunday.

Core of the European Championships are the canoe sprint races. On Thursday the men's 500-meter preliminary rounds in the K4 will open the championships. In the team boats in particular, some countries will use the European Championships to make the final adjustments within competitions before Paris 2024.

"We organise many international events every year, so the competition itself is nothing new from the organisational point of view, but it is definitely worth highlighting that for the first time we will be hosting three disciplines at the same time. On behalf of the Hungarian Kayak-Canoe Association, we initiated several years ago to the International Kayak-Canoe Association and the European Kayak-Canoe Association to organise international competitions involving several disciplines. The European association was open to this and they saw the opportunity in this. On the one hand, to merge three disciplines, and to supplement the sprint and para programs with SUP, as an emerging discipline with even Olympic chances," said the chairman of the Organizing Committee, Bálint Szakács.

Hungary has the largest team. A total of 50 canoeists from the host nation will compete in canoe sprint, paracanoe and SUP.

The last European Championships coincided with the European Games for the first time last year. In Krakow, Ukraine and the Czech Republic were the most successful nations with four gold medals each. Germany won the most medals, collecting 10 of them.

Szeged is hosting the event for the second time this season. In May, the races for the last Olympic quota places took place there.