2025–26 UEFA Champions League

The 2025–26 UEFA Champions League is the 71st season of Europe's premier club football tournament organised by UEFA, and the 34th season since it was rebranded from the European Cup to the UEFA Champions League. Paris Saint-Germain are the defending champions, having secured their maiden title the previous season.

The final will be played on 30 May 2026 at Puskás Aréna in Budapest, Hungary. It will be the first time Puskás Aréna will host a Champions League final. The stadium previously hosted the 2020 UEFA Super Cup, several matches of UEFA Euro 2020, and the 2023 UEFA Europa League final. The winners of the 2025–26 UEFA Champions League will automatically qualify for the 2026–27 UEFA Champions League league phase, the 2026 FIFA Intercontinental Cup final, the 2029 FIFA Club World Cup group stage, and earn the right to play against the winners of the 2025–26 UEFA Europa League in the 2026 UEFA Super Cup. This is the first Champions League season to feature six clubs from one nation, with England earning an extra spot through UEFA coefficient ranking and Tottenham Hotspur having won the previous season's UEFA Europa League.

Association team allocation

A total of 82 teams from 53 of the 55 UEFA member associations are set to participate in the 2025–26 UEFA Champions League (the exceptions being Liechtenstein which does not organise a domestic league and Russia which is currently suspended). The association ranking based on the UEFA association coefficients is used to determine the number of participating teams for each association:

• Associations 1–5 each have four teams.
• Association 6 has three teams.
• Associations 7–15 each have two teams.
• Associations 16–55 (except Liechtenstein and Russia) each have one team.
• The winners of the 2024–25 UEFA Champions League and 2024–25 UEFA Europa League are each given an additional entry if they do not qualify for the 2025–26 UEFA Champions League through their domestic league.
• The two associations with the best coefficients in the 2024–25 season will each have one European Performance Spot into the league phase. The winners of the UEFA Champions League and Europa League cannot fill the European Performance Spots.

Association ranking

For the 2025–26 UEFA Champions League, the associations are allocated places according to their 2024 UEFA association coefficients, which takes into account their performance in European competitions from 2019–20 to 2023–24. The table reflects Russia's ongoing suspension from UEFA.

Apart from the allocation based on the association coefficients, associations may have additional teams participating in the Champions League, as noted below:

• (EPS) – European Performance Spot, the additional berths for associations who finish in the top 2 of the 2024–25 association coefficients
• (TH) – Additional berth for UEFA Champions League title holders
• (EL) – Additional berth for UEFA Europa League title holders

Distribution

The information here reflects the ongoing suspension of Russia in European football, and so the following changes to the default access list have been made:

• The champions of associations 23 (Cyprus) and 24 (Hungary) will enter the second qualifying round (Champions Path) instead of the first qualifying round.

As the Champions League title holders (Paris Saint-Germain) qualified via their domestic league's standard berth allocation, the following changes to the default access list have been made:

• Olympiacos as the club with the highest club coefficient that would otherwise have entered the Champions Path of the qualifying phase or play-off round, will enter the league phase instead of the Champions Path second qualifying round.
• Slovan Bratislava and Qarabağ, as the two clubs with the highest club coefficient that would otherwise have entered the Champions Path first qualifying round, will enter the Champions Path second qualifying round.

Teams

The labels in the parentheses show how each team qualified for the place of its starting round:

• TH: Champions League title holders
• EL: Europa League title holders
• 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc.: League positions of the previous season
• EPS: European Performance Spots – the additional berths given to clubs from the two associations with the highest coefficient points in 2024–25

The label of European Performance Spots and title holders already qualified via league position are superscripted.

The second qualifying round, third qualifying round and play-off round are divided into Champions Path (CH) and League Path (LP).

Schedule

The schedule of the competition is as follows. One "exclusive week" was held in which Thursday was also a matchday. All matches in other weeks will be played on Tuesdays and Wednesdays apart from Matchday 8 (Wednesday only) and the final.

Qualifying rounds

First qualifying round

The draw for the first qualifying round was held on 17 June 2025. The first legs were played on 8 and 9 July, and the second legs were played on 15 and 16 July 2025.

The winners of the ties advanced to the Champions Path second qualifying round. Twelve of the losing teams were transferred to the Conference League Champions Path second qualifying round, and the other two losing teams (selected via a draw) were transferred to the Conference League Champions Path third qualifying round.

Second qualifying round

The draw for the second qualifying round was held on 18 June 2025. The first legs were played on 22 and 23 July, and the second legs were played on 29 and 30 July 2025.

The winners of the ties advanced to the third qualifying round. The losers were transferred to the Europa League third qualifying round.

Third qualifying round

The draw for the third qualifying round was held on 21 July 2025. The first legs were played on 5 and 6 August, and the second legs were played on 12 August 2025.

The winners of the ties advanced to the play-off round. The losers of the Champions Path were transferred to the Europa League play-off round. The losers of the League Path were transferred to the Europa League league phase.

Play-off round

The draw for the play-off round was held on 4 August 2025. The first legs were played on 19 and 20 August, and the second legs were played on 26 and 27 August 2025.

The winners of the ties advanced to the league phase. The losers were transferred to the Europa League league phase.

League phase

The league phase draw for the 2025–26 UEFA Champions League took place at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco on 28 August 2025. The 36 teams were divided into four pots of nine teams each based on their UEFA club coefficient, except for the Champions League title holders, who were automatically placed as the top seed in pot 1.

The 36 teams were manually drawn and then automated software drew their eight different opponents at random, determining which of their matches were at home and which ones away. Each team faced two opponents from each of the four pots, one at home and one away. Teams could not face opponents from their own association, and could only be drawn against a maximum of two sides from the same association.

Bodø/Glimt, Kairat, Pafos and Union Saint-Gilloise made their debut appearances in the league phase/group stage. Kairat, based in Almaty, became the easternmost team to ever qualify for the Champions League proper, and, after being drawn to play away against Sporting CP, broke the record for the longest trip in UEFA competitions, travelling 4,294 miles (6,911 km) from Almaty to Lisbon. In addition, Bodø/Glimt, based in Bodø within the Arctic Circle, became the northernmost European team to ever compete in the Champions League. This marked the first time a Norwegian team participated in the competition proper since the 2007–08 season, and was also the first season since 2005–06 in which no Ukrainian sides qualified for the group stage/league phase.

A total of 16 national associations were represented in the league phase.

Table

The top eight ranked teams advanced to the round of 16. The teams ranked from 9th to 24th will compete in the knockout phase play-offs, with the teams ranked from 9th to 16th seeded for the draw. Teams ranked from 25th to 36th were eliminated from all competitions.

Results

Knockout phase

In the knockout phase, teams will play against each other over two legs on a home-and-away basis, except for the one-match final. The top eight teams from the final standings in the league phase entered at the round of 16. In the knockout phase, there is no country protection, with teams from the same association able to face each other in any round. Teams can also face opponents they played during the league phase.

The mechanism of the draws for each round is as follows: