Explained: UEFA Champions League new format, Teams, Allocation, Coefficient Rankings

After months of speculation, the UEFA finally announced their new revamped format for the Champions League, which will be effective from the 2924-25 season. This will massively alter the current format and ensure greater participation for clubs across the continent. UEFA released a video on their official X(formerly Twitter) account that explains all the details about the new format. In the video, UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin said, “I am really pleased that it was a unanimous decision of the UEFA Executive Committee, with the European Club Association, European Leagues and national associations all agreeing with the proposal made. Another proof that European football is more united than ever.”

This format had been years in the making, but its implementation was only accelerated after the European Super League fiasco in April 2021. So, what’s the new format, and how it will affect the tournament?

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UEFA Champions League’s new format 

Under the new format, the number of teams will increase from 32 to 36. However, unlike the previous version, where teams were divided into eight groups of four, the new format will have four groups of nine teams.

Another feature of the current version was that teams in the group stage played against three of its other group members in a double-round-robin format. However, from the 2024-25 season, each team will play eight games, four home and four away. Also, all these eight games will be against eight different teams, allowing for more games between various teams.

The motto of this format is to ensure that there can be a lot of big games in the group stage itself, which will garner massive interest in the competition from the onset.

An exciting new era for European club football awaits 🤩

Here’s how the #UCL will look from 2024/25 👇 pic.twitter.com/mEffFOpX2O

— UEFA Champions League (@ChampionsLeague) March 4, 2024

Another exciting aspect of this is that the eight games that any team will play will be against two teams from each group (one home and one away), something not possible in the current format. Despite the changed version, all the group stage games will be played on Tuesdays and Wednesdays like the current one.

After each team has played their games, the top eight teams will qualify for the round of 16. However, teams placed between ninth and 24th will play a double-legged tie against one other. These eight teams that triumph here will join the top eight teams in round 16. From there on, the Champions League will follow the current format.

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Champions League New Format: Effect on league 

With the rise in the number of teams, UEFA has also announced how coefficient rankings of leagues will massively alter the number of spots a league has in the new format. According to two of the four additional spots, they will go to the two leagues that have topped the UEFA coefficient rankings. Another spot will go to the third-ranked team from the fifth-best league on the coefficient rankings.

According to UEFA website the Slot are as follows:

• Slot one: This place will go to the club ranked third in the championship of the association in fifth position in the access list, which is determined by the UEFA association club coefficient ranking.
• Slot two: This place will be awarded to a domestic champion by extending from four to five the number of clubs qualifying via the Champions path of the competition’s qualifying process, which will consist of four qualifying rounds.
• Slots three and four: These places will go to the associations with the best collective performance by their clubs in the previous season (i.e. the association club coefficient of the previous season, which is based on the total number of club coefficient points obtained by each club from an association divided by the number of participating clubs from that association). Those two associations will each earn one automatic place in the league phase (‘European Performance Spot’) for the club ranked next-best in their domestic league behind those clubs that have already qualified directly for the league phase.