With the first match week of the 2023-24 UEFA club competition campaign played last week, we have now entered the final season of the current UEFA cycle. Starting from next year, we will transition into the 2024-27 cycle, a period marked by significant changes, particularly in the format of UEFA club competitions. These changes will have a profound impact on both the competition calendar and the access list.
To provide some context, back in April 2021, the UEFA Executive Committee approved a new format for club competitions, set to be implemented starting from the 2024-25 season. Following months of discussions and intense debate, the new format, calendar, and access criteria received definitive approval from the UEFA Executive Committee in Vienna a year later, in May 2022.
The Club Advisory Platform is pleased to break down these changes and their implications for professional football clubs across Europe. So, what will UEFA club competitions look like from the 2024-25 season?
1 – Format details
Starting from the next season, the most significant change is the shift from the traditional group stage to a single-league phase that includes all participating teams. The present European competitions group stage includes 32 participants divided into eight groups of four. Under the new format, 36 clubs will participate in a single league-phase (former group stage), giving four more sides the opportunity to compete in UEFA club competition.
Every team will now play a minimum of 8 league phase matches against 8 different opponents, with four at home and four away (except for the UEFA Conference League, which has six matches per team). To determine the league-phase fixtures, there will be a draw at the start of the season based on the following principles:
For both the UCL and the UEL, the 36 teams will be divided into four pots of nine, with the split based on UEFA club coefficients and also taking into account the current title holders. Each club will be drawn to play two teams from each pot. So, unlike in the current format, a club in Pot 1 will play two other clubs from Pot 1.
In the case of the UECL, the 36 teams will be divided into 6 pots of 6, with clubs playing against 1 team from each pot.
Teams affiliated with the same association will not be drawn against each other. Nevertheless, in order to prevent potential deadlocks, leagues with four or more clubs could play one match against another team from the same country.
Following the league phase, the top eight teams will advance directly to the Round of 16. Teams in positions 9 to 24 will enter knockout playoffs to compete for the remaining eight places in the Round of 16 (two-legged confrontation). Teams in positions 25 to 36 will be eliminated from all European competitions, with no dropdown to other competitions.
There will be only one knockout-round draw for the round of 16 onwards, with teams seeded according to their final league-phase positions. This means that the final position in the table will be important, the higher the ranking in the league, the more favourable the knockout stage should be.
2 – Impact on calendar
With an increase in the number of matches per team, there will be 4 additional weeks of European matches bringing the total number of match weeks for UEFA club competitions to 10, up from 6 in the previous cycle. This decision will definitely put much pressure on domestic leagues whose calendars are already much congested.
In its original plan, UEFA proposed a total of 10 matches for all teams participating in the UCL league phase, but after consulting with key stakeholders, they decided to reduce it to a 8 matches per team. The European Leagues played a fundamental role in these negotiations and this adjustment was made to avoid additional pressure on domestic leagues and their value in the market. In this setup, the UEFA Champions League was initially set to almost double in size, but UEFA scaled back to 8 league phase fixtures, resulting in a total of 189 (+64) games in the season, still a very important increase considering that with the current format 125 is the total number of UCL matches during one season. The UEL will feature the same number of games, while the UECL will have slightly less, with 153 games in total.
Another new innovation is the introduction of "exclusive Match Week" dates for each competition, aiming to promote and give more visibility to each of them. The UCL and UECL exclusive match week will be in September, while the UEL exclusive match week will take place
3 – The new access list
The basis of the access list will remain the same as for the current season, but with the increase of participating teams in all competitions, 4 additional slots will be available in 2024/25, allocated as follows:
UEFA Champions League:
Slot one: This slot will be awarded to the club ranked third in the championship of the association in fifth position in the access list;
Slot two: This slot will be given to a domestic champion by increasing the number of clubs qualifying via the Champions path from four to five;
Slots three and four: These slots will be granted to the associations with the best overall performance by their clubs in the previous season. The two associations with the highest coefficients will each earn one automatic place in the league phase for the club that is ranked next-best in their domestic league, among those clubs that have not already qualified directly for the league phase.
UEFA Europa League:
Slot one: This slot will be awarded to the Cup Winner of the association in seventh position in the access list;
Slot two: This slot will be allocated to an additional domestic champion which comes from the UCL Champions path Playoffs round;
Slots three and four: These slots will be given to two additional teams by increasing the number of clubs qualifying via the Europa League qualification rounds from 10 to 12;
UEFA Europa Conference League:
Slot one and two: These slots will be allocated to two additional teams which comes from the UEL Playoffs round (12 teams now qualifying instead of 10 previously);
Slots three and four: These slots will be given to two additional teams by increasing the number of clubs qualifying via the Europa Conference League qualification rounds from 17 to 19.
Source: UEFA
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