How will the new UEFA Champions League format work?

By CNN Newsource

Published March 5, 2024 9:25 AM

By George Ramsay, CNN

(CNN) — The UEFA Champions League – the most prestigious competition in European club football – is getting a makeover, promising a completely different look and feel when it kicks off next season.

According to UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin, the new format was passed unanimously by the organization’s executive committee and will see qualification “based on sporting merit.”

From next season, UEFA hopes, fans will get to see more top-level matches earlier in the competition with higher stakes in each game.

So how will the Champions League work from the 2024/25 season?

The primary change is that 32 teams will no longer compete in eight groups of four during the group stages. Instead, the opening round will be an expanded 36-team stage in which the teams participate in a single league.

Each team will play eight matches against eight different clubs, four at home and four away. The teams each club plays will be selected from four seeded pots (based on ranking) with two opponents being drawn from each – with one home game and one away game per pot.

This is a departure from the current group-stage format, in which teams play against the three other teams in their group twice (one home and one away game per opponent).

UEFA says that it wants clubs to test themselves against a wider range of opposition and believes that the top teams will “go head to head more often and earlier in the competition” in the new format.

The top eight teams in the league will qualify automatically for the knockout round, and the teams ranked ninth to 24th will have to compete in a two-legged play-off to determine who also reaches the last 16.

Unlike the current format, there will be no opportunity for teams to qualify for the Europa League as those finishing 25th or lower, as well as those who lose their play-off tie, will be eliminated.

The victorious teams in the play-off round will then face the top eight seeded teams in the first knockout round (last-16 stage) before the quarterfinals, semifinals and a showpiece – one-off – final. The 2025 final will be staged at the Allianz Arena in Munich, Germany.

How will teams qualify?

As in the current format, teams will qualify based on their domestic performance in the previous season.

Two of the four new teams will qualify from the top two countries in the UEFA co-efficient rankings, which are calculated based on the results of all clubs in UEFA’s three competitions.

Currently, those clubs will come from Italy and Germany, the top two countries in the co-efficient rankings.

One team will qualify for finishing third in the fifth-ranked association in UEFA’s access list – currently France – while another spot will be awarded to a domestic champion “by extending from four to five the number of clubs qualifying via the Champions path of the competition’s qualifying process,” according to UEFA.

Will the Europa League and Conference League be affected?

The Europa League, Europe’s second-tier club competition, will follow the same, revamped format as the Champions League next season.

The Europa Conference League will be rebranded as the UEFA Conference League and will see teams play six matches against six different opponents in the league phase.

Both competitions will also have 36 teams.

When will the games take place?

The league phase of the Champions League and Europa League will take place between September and January, while the Conference League’s first stage will be held between September and December.

Games will still be midweek (Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday) and each of the three leagues will have their own exclusive match week.

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