Champions, Europa and Conference 2026-27: full guide

UEFA hands out 108 places across its three club competitions, thirty-six in each. On paper they look like three versions of the same tournament, and since the change of format in 2024 they look more alike than ever. But the differences that remain are precisely the ones that decide a club's year: how many matches it plays, when its season ends, and how much it earns simply for being there.

With the draws just around the corner — the Champions League on 27 August, the other two on the 28th — it is worth having all three sets of rules clear before the balls start coming out.

What all three share

The skeleton is identical. Thirty-six teams in a single table, with no groups. Each club faces different opponents, half at home and half away, and everyone ends up ranked in one standings table that leads to three destinations:

• Places 1 to 8: straight through to the last 16.
• Places 9 to 24: a two-legged play-off in February for a place in the last 16.
• Places 25 to 36: eliminated, with no safety net and no transfer to another competition.

That last line matters more than it looks. Before, a club knocked out of the Champions League dropped into the Europa League. Now, finishing twenty-fifth means ending your European season in January.

Champions League: eight matches and the longest calendar

Thirty-six teams and eight matchdays. The first is played between 8 and 10 September; the eighth on 27 January 2027. In between there are matchdays in October, November, December and one final round in January.

The draw is on Thursday 27 August at 18:00 in Nyon, and it brings together the 29 clubs already qualified plus the seven who come through the play-off round being played this very week. The knockout stage begins with the play-off round on 16 and 23 February, and the final is on Saturday 5 June 2027 at the Estadio Metropolitano in Madrid, which hosts again eight years on from the 2019 final.

The share-out of places among the big leagues leaves Spain and England with five each, thanks to both taking one of the two extra berths UEFA awards for continental performance: Betis for Spain and Liverpool for England. Italy and Germany have four. France have three confirmed, with Lyon playing for the fourth in the play-off against Fenerbahçe.

Europa League: same format, a third of the money

There are 36 teams and eight matchdays here too, but everything runs a week behind. The first matchday is played on 16 and 17 September and the last on 28 January 2027. The draw is on Friday 28 August from 13:00, in a joint ceremony with the Conference League.

Its make-up is the most convoluted of the three: twelve direct qualifiers, the place reserved for the Conference League winners, twelve teams arriving from qualifying and eleven losers from the Champions League, between those from the third qualifying round and those from the play-off round. In other words, a good chunk of the field is not known until August is over.

The final will be played on 26 May 2027 at the stadium in Frankfurt, which staged five matches at Euro 2024.

Conference League: six matches and a league phase up to December

This is where the only real structural difference lies. The Conference League also has 36 teams, but each one plays six matches, not eight. Its league phase starts later than the other two, on 15 October, and finishes much earlier: on 17 December 2026. It is the only one of the three whose first phase is over before Christmas.

It has another quirk that sets it apart: no team enters directly. All 36 come through the qualifying phase, without exception. And that is why this week's play-off round is especially cruel in this competition: the five representatives of the big leagues — Getafe, Brighton, Atalanta, Freiburg and Monaco — are all in it, and none of them has its place secured yet. Whoever loses is out of Europe altogether, because in the Conference League there is no second chance.

The final will be played on 2 June 2027 at Beşiktaş Park in Istanbul, the same ground where Aston Villa won the Europa League three months ago.

The money, which is where they really part company

Here the step up is brutal. Simply for entering the league phase, a Champions League club collects around €18.62 million. A Europa League club, €4.31 million. A Conference League club, €3.17 million. The Champions League pays more than four times what the Europa League pays and almost six times what the Conference League pays, before a ball is kicked.

• Champions League: €18.62m fixed, €2.1m per win and €700,000 per draw.
• Europa League: €4.31m fixed, €450,000 per win and €150,000 per draw.
• Conference League: €3.17m fixed, €400,000 per win and €133,000 per draw.
• The total pots follow the same proportion: 2,467 million for the Champions League, 565 million for the Europa League and 285 million for the Conference League.

A necessary warning about these figures: they come from the distribution UEFA set out in its circular of July 2026, and the governing body itself describes them as provisional until the cycle's commercial revenue is closed off. They are useful for understanding the proportions, not for doing the accounts.

The winners and the place they left vacant

There is a detail in the regulations that has been triggered twice this year and that almost nobody keeps in mind. Winning the Champions League or the Europa League earns a place in the following season's edition, but if the winners are already qualified through their league, that place is not lost: it moves down the access list to another club.

PSG won the Champions League and were already qualified, so their place ended up with Shakhtar Donetsk, who went straight into the league phase as the champions with the best coefficient among federations eleven to fifty-five. Aston Villa won the Europa League and were also already qualified through their fourth place in the Premier League, and their place went to Sporting CP. Two clubs are in the Champions League thanks to trophies somebody else won.

Crystal Palace, by contrast, did need theirs: their Conference League title gave them a spot in the Europa League league phase, and they are taking it.

What can still change

Everything above is the picture as of 17 August, and this week will move it. The play-off rounds of the three competitions are played between the 18th and the 27th, and out of them come the last seven Champions League places, eleven teams who will drop into the Europa League and the definitive shape of the Conference League.

"Same format, same 36 teams, same cut-off points. The only things that really separate the three competitions are two matches and fourteen million euros."