From 32 to 36 Clubs: How The Champions League Format Changes From Next Season

Beginning from next season, the UEFA Champions League would start with 36 teams instead of 32 teams it usually used to be. This means that four additional teams would enter the competition. Not just the Champions league but also the Europa League and Europa Conference League would see these changes.

It might seem like a small change but adding four more teams would change a whole lot of things to how the competition is organized. With four extra teams coming into the competition, the UEFA Champions League would see the number of games increased from the usual 125 it used to be in the previous seasons to 225 games. This is an incredible increase of 100 games and therefore, more match-days would be needed to fix all the fixtures.

It usually used to be 32 teams in eight groups of four teams each competing in a group stage at the beginning of the competition. This system would be abolished beginning from next season for a ‘Swiss League’ format which would be replacing the traditional group stage format.

The Swiss League format is a single league style including all the clubs in the competition just like the traditional domestic league. Each team in the competition would play a total of eight matches in the league stage; four home games and four away games, except for teams in the Europa Conference League who would play six matches; three home games and three away games.

The 36 teams would be divided into four pots of nine teams each, with pot 1 having the Champions League winner and the eight teams with the best coefficient rankings. The remaining pots would be organized according to coefficient rankings. This means that domestic league winners and the winner of the Europa League will no longer be seeded beginning from next season.

A team will not be drawn against another team in the same pot and just like it used to be, a team will not play another team from the same country in the league stage. However to avoid deadlocking, teams from the same association may have one fixture against each other for countries having four or more clubs in the competition.

At the end of the league stage, the eight teams coming at the top of the table would qualify straight into the round of 16. The next 16 teams on the table would enter a playoff stage. Teams finishing between 9th to 16th position would be seeded and would face-off against teams finishing between 17th to 24th position in a two-leg home and away fixtures.

At the end of the playoff stage, the qualifying teams would join the top eight teams to make up the 16 teams for the round of 16 knockout stage. How the competition is conducted from the round of 16 remains unchanged from the current season, however teams would have a clearer path to the final from this stage; 1st placed team and 2nd placed team at the end of league stage would be placed at the opposite end of the draws and would only meet each other at the final.