Champions League’s new format throws curveball in European football

The draw for the revamped Champions League will be held in Monaco on Thursday.

Here’s a look at the new format and how the draw will work.

The traditional group-stage format, featuring eight pools of four teams each, has been scrapped.

In its place is a 36-team league phase. Instead of six games each in the old format, teams will now play eight matches – four at home and four away – against two opponents from each of the four seeding pots.

The top eight teams will qualify automatically for the Round of 16, while teams finishing ninth to 24th will enter a new knockout-phase playoff round to decide the final eight Round of 16 berths.

Teams finishing 25th and lower will be eliminated; they will no longer drop down to the Europa League.

The same format will be used in the Europa League, with the Conference League adopting a similar structure, except teams will play only six initial matches instead of eight.

UEFA believes this format will offer a more compelling spectacle, with more matchups between top teams at an earlier stage than in the old format.

League placement will also influence a team’s route through the knockout phase, adding extra significance to matches even if qualification is already assured.

Clubs will benefit from additional matchday revenue, with at least two extra games and the possibility of two more if they advance to the knockout-phase playoffs.

UEFA hopes the new format will be popular with clubs and fans and help deter any threat of a revived European Super League.

Rather than the manual draw previously used, UEFA will now employ a hybrid draw. Each of the 36 teams will still be drawn manually, working through the four seeding pots from top to bottom. However, drawing opponents will be done digitally, taking only seconds per team.

The technology UEFA uses will follow certain principles, such as keeping teams from the same country apart until the knockout-phase playoffs and ensuring no more than two opponents from one country in the league phase.

UEFA anticipates the hybrid draw will take about the same time – 35 minutes – as the old manual draw, estimating that a fully manual draw could take well over three hours.

While the Champions League draw takes place on Thursday, the scheduling of matches will be confirmed on Saturday, with the Europa League and Conference League draws occurring on Friday.

UEFA has set up a tennis-style knockout phase to ensure that teams finishing first and second in the league are kept apart on opposite sides of the draw until the final, as well as teams finishing third and fourth, fifth and sixth, and seventh and eighth.

This is why every point could be crucial up to the final matchday, even for teams that cannot finish outside the top eight.

For the first time, two teams have qualified via European Performance Spots (EPS). These spots are awarded to one team from each of the two countries that performed best in the previous season’s UEFA competitions. Italy and Germany were last season’s top-performing countries, so the spots this season have gone to Bologna and Borussia Dortmund.

Another innovation is that each of the three UEFA men’s club competitions will have one “exclusive week,” with no matches played in the other two competitions that week.

For the Champions League, the exclusive week is Matchday 1, with games on Sept. 17, 18, and 19. The Europa League’s exclusive week is also its first match round on Sept. 25 and 26, while the Conference League’s exclusive week is its final round of league-phase games on Dec. 19.

There is also more money to be distributed among the clubs in the Champions League league phase – 2.4 billion euros ($2.6 billion) this season compared to 2 billion euros in 2023-24. However, the new figure will be shared among 36 clubs rather than the 32 previously.

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