Champions League

The 2026-27 season

The league phase opens on 8 September 2026 and runs to 27 January 2027: eight rounds, 144 matches, thirty-six clubs. Paris Saint-Germain arrive as holders, having beaten Arsenal on penalties in last season's final after 120 minutes finished 1-1.

Arsenal set the league phase benchmark on the way to that final, taking 24 points from eight matches, the best record of the 36 clubs. It bought them a direct place in the round of 16 and a fortnight off in February, and they still lost the final on penalties. Bayern finished the phase on 21 points and Liverpool on 18.

The full 2025-26 record is kept here: the final table of all 36 clubs and every match from the league phase to the final.

What replaced the group stage

Until 2024 this competition was 32 clubs in eight groups of four, six matches each, the top two through and the third-placed club dropped into the Europa League. Groups settled before the last round, and a club could reach the knockout rounds having played nobody of consequence.

The format now is a single league of 36. UEFA seeds the clubs into four pots of nine, and each draws two opponents from every pot, one at home and one away. Eight matches, one table, and a club measured against the whole competition rather than the three teams it happened to be drawn with.

The round that did not exist before

Between the league phase and the round of 16 sits the knockout play-off. Clubs finishing ninth to twenty-fourth play a two-legged tie in February, seeded so that ninth to sixteenth meet seventeenth to twenty-fourth and play the second leg at home. The eight winners join the top eight in the round of 16.

That is an extra fortnight of football for sixteen clubs and a fortnight of rest for the eight that finished above them, in the middle of a domestic season. That rest is what finishing high buys, and it keeps the last league round worth watching for clubs already through.

How clubs get here

Clubs win most places through their domestic league position, and how many a country gets follows the UEFA association coefficient, not a fixed allocation. Two further places go to the associations whose clubs performed best across all three European competitions the season before, which is how England and Spain each hold a fifth place in the current competition. The holders qualify automatically, as do the winners of the Europa League.

Clubs from smaller associations must come through a qualifying round first, and most of them do not survive it. That is the part of the competition the league table never shows: by the time the 36 clubs are set in late August, a larger number have already been eliminated.

When the rounds fall

Eight rounds between September and January, and the gaps are not equal. The competition opens across three days, 8 to 10 September, and then goes quiet for a month. October carries two rounds in consecutive weeks, on the 13th and 14th and again on the 20th and 21st. November has two more, on the 3rd and 4th and then the 24th and 25th, and the sixth round falls on 8 and 9 December.

After that the competition stops for six weeks. The seventh round returns on 19 and 20 January and the eighth follows a week later on 27 January, when all eighteen matches kick off together.

Five rounds fall inside the nine weeks between mid-October and early December, so a club still in the competition is playing midweek and at the weekend through the busiest part of its domestic season. The month after the opening round and the six weeks over the new year are the two stretches when it is not.

Following the season week to week

The competition has no weekly rhythm. Weeks pass with nothing, then eighteen matches arrive across two nights and the table reorders from top to bottom. The table on this page updates as results are confirmed, and the round preview covers the coming matchday with where both clubs stand.

Finding the match is the harder part. UEFA sells the rights market by market, and in Britain, Germany and Italy a main holder takes most of the fixtures while a second service keeps an exclusive midweek pick. The viewing guide lists the confirmed broadcasters by country, including which markets still show the final free. On the closing night of the league phase no broadcaster anywhere carries all eighteen matches live, because they all kick off at once.

Champions League: common questions

How does the Champions League league phase work?

Thirty-six clubs play in a single league table rather than in groups. Each club plays eight matches against eight different opponents, two drawn from each of the four seeding pots, four at home and four away. No club plays the same opponent twice, and no club plays all of the others.

How many teams go through to the knockout rounds?

Twenty-four of the thirty-six. The top eight go straight into the round of 16. Ninth to twenty-fourth play a two-legged knockout play-off in February for the other eight places. Twenty-fifth to thirty-sixth go out of Europe altogether: there is no longer a drop into the Europa League.

When does the 2026-27 Champions League start and finish?

The league phase opens on 8 September 2026 and the eighth and final round falls on 27 January 2027, with all eighteen matches kicking off at the same time. The knockout play-off follows in February and the competition runs on through the spring.

Who won the Champions League last season?

Paris Saint-Germain. They beat Arsenal on penalties in the 2025-26 final after 120 minutes finished 1-1. Arsenal had topped the league phase with 24 points from eight matches, the best record of the 36 clubs.

Why did the Champions League change format?

The old eight-group stage produced a large number of dead matches: with six fixtures and two qualifying places per group, plenty of groups were decided before the last round. The single table replaced them with a competition where a club can be moved across a qualification line by results in matches it is not playing, which is also why the final round is played simultaneously.

How do you bet on the Champions League?

Two things separate it from a domestic league. Clubs meet opponents they have no recent record against, so form lines are thinner than the prices suggest, and the reward for finishing in the top eight changes how hard clubs try in the last rounds. Our betting guide covers how odds work and what welcome offers actually require.

Not sure where a match is on? The viewing guide lists the confirmed rights holders by country.