Champions League

Before the 2024–25 season, the competition opened with a group stage: clubs were drawn into small groups, played each opponent home and away, and the top two from each group advanced. That structure is gone.

The competition now begins with a single league phase containing 36 clubs, ranked together in one table. The arrangement is often described as a Swiss model: rather than a fixed group, each club is drawn against a set of opponents determined by seeding and country restrictions, so that no club plays the same opponent twice and the fixture list is different for every club.

How the league phase runs

• Each club plays eight matches — four at home and four away — against eight different opponents.
• All 36 clubs are ranked in one table. Because everyone is in the same pool, a club's position depends on results across the whole field, not just within a group of three opponents.
• Clubs are drawn so that they face opponents of a comparable seeding band, which is what keeps the fixture list balanced without groups.

How clubs advance

The top 24 of the 36 progress to the knockout stage, in two tiers.

• Finishing 1st to 8th qualifies directly for the round of 16.
• Finishing 9th to 24th enters a knockout play-off round — an additional two-legged tie — with the winners joining the top eight in the round of 16.
• Finishing 25th to 36th eliminates the club from the competition.

The separation matters: a high league-phase finish is worth an entire two-legged tie, which is why finishing in the top eight is treated as a target in its own right rather than a formality.

Where the places come from

Most places are earned through domestic league position in the previous season, with the number of places per country allocated by the confederation according to a ranking of its clubs' results. Two places are additionally reserved for the associations whose clubs collectively performed best in the previous season's competitions. Because the allocation is recalculated each season, the number of clubs a given league sends can change.

How the knockout rounds work

Knockout ties are played over two legs, home and away, with the aggregate score deciding who advances. Where the aggregate is level, the tie is settled by extra time and then penalties. The final is a single match at a pre-selected neutral venue.

The draw for the knockout rounds is not open: a club's league-phase position determines which opponents it can be drawn against and in which half of the bracket it sits. That is a deliberate consequence of having one league table — position earned in the league phase buys both a bye and an easier path.

Reading the competition

Three practical consequences follow from the format, and they are the reason it is worth understanding rather than skimming.

• Goal difference is unusually valuable. With 36 clubs in one table and only eight matches each, small margins separate clubs competing for a direct round-of-16 place from those entering the play-off round.
• Fixture difficulty is unequal by design. Because every club faces a different set of eight opponents, comparing two clubs' totals requires knowing whom each played, not just how many points they took.
• The season is longer. A club reaching the final plays up to 17 matches in the competition, against eight in the old group stage plus knockout ties — an increase that has knock-on effects on domestic scheduling.