Champions League play-off 2026-27: seven ties, €14m each
This Tuesday the cruellest round of the European calendar begins. Fourteen clubs, seven two-legged ties between 18 and 26 August, and seven places in the league phase of the 2026-27 Champions League. The winners complete the 36-team field. The losers do not go home: they drop into the Europa League league phase, all seven of them without exception.
The difference between one and the other can be put in numbers. Getting into the Champions League league phase brings a fixed payment of €18.62 million before a single match is played. Losing the play-off leaves you €4.29 million. That is €14.3 million decided in 180 minutes, without counting the €2.1 million each win pays afterwards.
The seven ties
The draw was held on 3 August in Nyon and the third qualifying round finished on the 11th, so there are no unknowns left. Five ties belong to the champions path, reserved for the winners of the more modest leagues, and two to the league path, the route in for the runners-up and third-placed sides of the bigger competitions.
Champions path: five ties, five places
- Levski Sofia – AEK Athens, with the first leg in Sofia
- Dinamo Zagreb – Viking, with the first leg in Zagreb
- Celtic – LASK, with the first leg at Celtic Park
- Slovan Bratislava – Celje, with the first leg in Bratislava
- Hapoel Beer Sheva – Sabah, with Hapoel as the home side but playing in Bucharest
League path: two ties, two places
- Fenerbahçe – Olympique Lyonnais, with the first leg in Istanbul
- NEC Nijmegen – Bodø/Glimt, with the first leg at the Goffertstadion
When each match is played
The first legs are split across two nights. On Tuesday the 18th it is Levski-AEK, Dinamo Zagreb-Viking and Fenerbahçe-Lyon. On Wednesday the 19th, Hapoel Beer Sheva-Sabah, Celtic-LASK, Slovan-Celje and NEC-Bodø/Glimt.
The second legs follow the same split a week later. On Tuesday the 25th come LASK-Celtic in Linz, Sabah-Hapoel in Baku and Bodø/Glimt-NEC at Aspmyra. On Wednesday the 26th, AEK-Levski in Athens, Viking-Dinamo in Stavanger, Celje-Slovan and Lyon-Fenerbahçe close it out. The league phase draw is the following day, Thursday the 27th.
The team that won in Manchester and in Madrid, back in qualifying
If one tie sums up how arbitrary access to the Champions League can be, it is NEC Nijmegen against Bodø/Glimt. The Norwegian club are coming off one of those 2025-26 seasons you do not forget: they beat Manchester City 3-1 at Aspmyra in January, beat Atlético 2-1 at the Metropolitano eight days later, knocked out Inter Milan 5-2 on aggregate in the knockout play-off round and reached the last 16, where they went out to Sporting.
Eight months on they are back in the qualifying rounds, playing for their lives against a debutant. Because NEC have never played in the Champions League: they arrive after recording the best finish in their history in the Eredivisie, a third place, and after their first European adventure since 2008-09. To get in here they knocked out Olympiacos with a goal in extra time.
Twenty years on, Levski
Levski Sofia are one tie away from the league phase again, two decades after their only experience of the top competition. That was in 2006-07, in a group with Barcelona, Chelsea and Werder Bremen, and they lost all six matches. To get this far they have knocked out Kairat Almaty 2-0 on aggregate.
That same Kairat is precisely the ghost Celtic have shaken off. The Kazakh club knocked the Scots out last season on penalties, after 210 goalless minutes across the two legs and extra time. Instead of the rematch, Martin O'Neill's Celtic drew LASK, Austrian champions for the second time in their history but with a wretched recent European record: a single win in their last fourteen continental matches.
A home side 2,000 kilometres away and an Azerbaijani debutant
Hapoel Beer Sheva will play their home matches at the Arena Giulești in Bucharest, and will do so in the league phase too if they qualify. Their opponents, Sabah, are the champions of Azerbaijan and have reached this point for the first time in their history after coming back against Aarhus: they lost 2-1 in Denmark and won 4-0 at home.
The other tie with big names is Fenerbahçe-Lyon. The French club came in through the league path thanks to their fourth place in Ligue 1 and got here by coming back against Sparta Prague: they lost the first leg 2-1 and won 3-0 in Lyon.
What is at stake, in euros
- €18.62 million in fixed prize money for entering the league phase, most of it paid in September.
- €4.29 million for whoever loses the play-off, plus whatever they are due from the Europa League distribution.
- €2.1 million for each win in the league phase and €700,000 for each draw.
- Eight guaranteed matches against eight different opponents, four at home and four away.
- And for the loser, the Europa League league phase, which is not a bad consolation either.
A warning about these figures is in order: they come from the distribution UEFA set out in its July circular, and the governing body itself describes it as provisional, subject to final commercial revenue. The order of magnitude is firm; the exact cent is not.
After the play-off, the draw
The seven winners join the 29 teams already qualified and complete the 36 of the league phase. The draw is held on Thursday 27 August at 18:00 in Nyon, and the first matchday is played between 8 and 10 September.
"Winning the tie is worth €18.62 million. Losing it, €4.29 million. One hundred and eighty minutes in August have never been worth so much."