UEFA Champions League

The UEFA Champions League is a professional soccer tournament held annually in Europe. It is operated by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), one of the six regional member confederations that make up the soccer’s global governing body, Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). The tournament gets its name from the fact that many of the participating club teams are reigning champions of national leagues from across Europe. Other high-ranking clubs earn invitations through other qualification streams. The Champions League is widely considered to rank among the world’s most prestigious and popular sporting events.

Brief History

The UEFA Champions League tournament debuted during the 1955–56 European professional soccer season. Originally called the European Cup, the tournament quickly became an annual fixture. The competition’s opening edition featured a field of sixteen champion teams from various national club leagues, competing through four rounds of knockout play. The Spanish club Real Madrid holds the honor of being the first team to win the championship (and in fact won the first five editions, quickly establishing a long-running reputation as the most successful club in the history of the tournament).

In 1960, UEFA doubled the field to include thirty-two teams, adding a fifth round of knockout play to accommodate the change. The tournament retained this format until the 1992–93 season, when it changed to include a group stage and a knockout stage. Reflecting this overhaul, the tournament was also officially renamed to the UEFA Champions League. The first edition of the new tournament format saw Marseille capture France’s first European club championship after defeating AC Milan 1–0 in Munich, Germany. Over the next decade the tournament underwent some additional changes, notably including expansion to allow multiple teams from the highest-ranked national associations to qualify. After some experimentation with multiple group stages, the format returned to a single group stage and knockout round of sixteen in the 2003–04 season.

Real Madrid continued its dominance during the Champions League’s modern era, adding nine more titles between the 1992–93 and 2023–24 seasons to bring its total to fifteen. No other team had reached double-digit championship wins by the early 2020s, with AC Milan's seven titles standing in second place all time. Other clubs with multiple championships throughout the tournament's history include Liverpool (England), Bayern Munich (Germany), Barcelona (Spain), Ajax (Netherlands), Manchester United (England), Internazionale (a.k.a. Inter Milan; Italy), Chelsea (England), Benfica (Portugal), Nottingham Forest (England), Juventus (Italy), and FC Porto (Portugal). Several teams, including Atlético Madrid (Spain), Reims (France), and Valencia (Spain) had made multiple appearances in the tournament’s championship game without ever winning the title.

Like most sporting events, the UEFA Champions League was severely disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic that was declared in 2020. Beginning in March of that year many UEFA matches were postponed, with play only resuming in the summer. The later stages of the tournament were temporarily changed to a single-elimination format, and the final was delayed until late August. Bayern Munich won its sixth title by defeating Paris Saint-Germain, 1–0, and also made history as the first club ever to win all of its matches in the tournament. In 2021 UEFA estimated pandemic-related financial losses of over 8 billion euros across Europe's top-ranked clubs. That same year UEFA joined with national leagues and FIFA in strongly opposing the creation of the rival European Super League, which was initially joined by many of the most prominent European soccer teams but quickly fell apart amid much criticism and controversy.

Format, Rules, and Regulations

The teams that participate in UEFA Champions League each year are determined with a complex qualification process, which was significantly revised ahead of the 2009–10 season and again before the 2024–25 season. UEFA uses a points-based coefficient system to rank Europe’s national professional soccer leagues (or associations) as well as each club within those leagues. The team that wins the annual championship in each of the top ten national leagues is guaranteed a spot in the Champions League. The defending Champions League titleholder also earns automatic entry, as does the defending titleholder of the UEFA Europa League (beginning with the 2015–16 season). Coefficients are then applied to qualify additional teams from the top-ranked national associations. Leagues with higher coefficients earn more spots in the Champions League; clubs finishing second through fourth in their national league’s final standings have a path to automatic qualification depending on their association coefficient.

Meanwhile, national champion clubs from lower-ranked associations compete in three qualifying rounds and a playoff round. A select number of second-place, third-place, and fourth-place teams from these associations, depending on league ranking, can also participate in a preliminary tournament, known as the "League Path." Winners from these qualifying phases join the automatically qualified teams in official Champions League competition.

From the 2003–04 season through the 2023–24 seasons, thirty-two teams in total qualified for the Champions League group stage. A randomized draw divided these clubs into eight groups of four teams, with a restriction on placing two or more teams from the same national league in the same group and a coefficient-based seeding system applied to create competitive balance. The group stage then featured a double round-robin format, with each team in a group playing the other teams in the group twice: once at home and once on the road. In these games, teams earned three points for a win, one point for a tie, and zero points for a loss. The top two teams from each group advanced to the sixteen-team knockout stage, with a series of tiebreaking criteria (including points earned in head-to-head matchups, goal differential in head-to-head matchups, goals scored in head-to-head matchups, and goals scored on the road in head-to-head matchups) applied as necessary.

Beginning with the 2024–25 season, the tournament format was substantially revised. The group stage was replaced with a so-called league stage, with an expanded field of thirty-six qualified teams ranked as a single group. A draw system using four seeding pots determines matchups. Every team plays eight different opponents, with four games at home and four away. At the end of league stage play, the top eight clubs advance directly to the round of sixteen, while the bottom twelve teams are eliminated. The ninth through twenty-fourth ranked teams compete in a playoff round, which determines the final eight clubs to advance to the round of sixteen. According to UEFA, the revised format was intended to make games more meaningful throughout this phase.

The round of sixteen or knockout stage then proceeds much as it did before the 2024–25 changes, with some slight differences in the seeding process. Teams are ranked again, and a draw is held to determine the bracket. Unlike most other major international soccer tournaments, the UEFA Champions League does not follow a single-elimination structure. Instead, teams meet in home-and-home games, with each game known as a “leg.” The team that scores more goals over the course of the two legs—a term called aggregate goals—advances to the next round. Originally, if each competitor club scored an equal number of aggregate goals during a round, the club scoring more goals away from home advanced; if that criterion failed to settle the tie, extra time and then a penalty shootout would be held. However, beginning in the 2021–22 season, UEFA eliminated the away goals rule, moving directly to extra time (two fifteen minute periods) and then a penalty shootout if necessary to break a tie.

This format continues until only two teams have not been eliminated. These teams then meet in a single-elimination match, held at a predetermined neutral site. If the score is tied after ninety minutes of regulation time, the teams play two additional fifteen-minute periods, then proceed to a penalty shootout if extra time fails to break the tie. The UEFA Champions League final is played annually in late May or early June, with the location changing from year to year.

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