2023–24 UEFA Champions League


The 2023–24 UEFA Champions League was the 69th season of Europe's premier club football tournament organised by UEFA, and the 32nd season since it was renamed from the European Champion Clubs' Cup to the UEFA Champions League.
Real Madrid defeated Borussia Dortmund 2–0 in the final, which was played at the Wembley Stadium in London, England, for a record-extending 15th European Cup title, and their sixth in eleven years. As winners, Real Madrid earned the right to play against Atalanta, the winners of the 2023–24 UEFA Europa League, in the 2024 UEFA Super Cup. They also qualified for the final of the brand-new 2024 FIFA Intercontinental Cup and the expanded 2025 FIFA Club World Cup in the United States.
This edition was the final season with the format of 32 teams participating in the group stage, after UEFA announced that a brand new format would be introduced for the following edition.
Manchester City were the defending champions, but were eliminated by eventual winners Real Madrid in the quarter-finals.

Association team allocation

A total of 78 teams from 53 of the 55 UEFA member associations participated in the 2023–24 UEFA Champions League. The association ranking based on the UEFA association coefficients was used to determine the number of participating teams for each association:
  • Associations 1–4 each had four teams qualify.
  • Associations 5–6 each had three teams qualify.
  • Associations 7–15 each had two teams qualify.
  • Associations 16–55 each had one team qualify.
  • The winners of the 2022–23 UEFA Champions League and 2022–23 UEFA Europa League were each given an additional entry if they did not qualify for the 2023–24 UEFA Champions League through their domestic league.

Association ranking

For the 2023–24 UEFA Champions League, the associations were allocated places according to their 2022 UEFA association coefficients, which took into account their performance in European competitions from 2017–18 to 2021–22. The team allocation reflected Russia's ongoing suspension from UEFA competitions.
Apart from the allocation based on the association coefficients, associations could have additional teams participating in the Champions League, as noted below:

Distribution

The following is the default access list for the 2023–24 season.
Due to the suspension of Russia for the 2023–24 European season, the following changes to the access list were made:
  • The champions of association 11 entered the group stage instead of the play-off round.
  • The champions of association 13 entered the play-off round instead of the third qualifying round.
  • The champions of association 15 entered the third qualifying round instead of the second qualifying round.
  • The champions of associations 18 and 19 entered the second qualifying round instead of the first qualifying round.
  • The runner-up of association 11 entered the third qualifying round instead of the second qualifying round.
Since the Champions League title holders qualified via their domestic league, the following changes to the access list were made:
  • The champions of association 12 entered the group stage instead of the play-off round.
  • The champions of association 14 entered the play-off round instead of the third qualifying round.
  • The champions of association 16 entered the third qualifying round instead of the second qualifying round.
  • The champions of associations 20 and 21 entered the second qualifying round instead of the first qualifying round.

Teams

The labels in the parentheses show how each team qualified for the place of its starting round:
The second qualifying round, third qualifying round and play-off round were divided into Champions Path and League Path.
'''Notes'''

Schedule

The schedule of the competition was as follows. All matches were played on Tuesdays and Wednesdays apart from the preliminary round final and the final.

Group stage

The group stage draw for the 2023–24 UEFA Champions League took place at the Grimaldi Forum, Monaco, on 31 August at. The 32 teams were drawn into eight groups of four. For the draw, the teams were seeded into four pots, each of eight teams, based on the following principles:
Teams from the same association could not be drawn into the same group.
Antwerp and Union Berlin made their debut appearances in the group stage.
A total of 15 national associations were represented in the group stage.

Knockout phase

In the knockout phase, teams played against each other over two legs on a home-and-away basis, except for the one-match final.

Statistics

Statistics exclude qualifying rounds and play-off round.

Top goalscorers

RankPlayerTeamGoalsMinutes played
1fbaicon|GER

Team of the Season

The UEFA technical study group selected the following players as the team of the tournament.
PlayerTeam
fbaicon|GERTooltip|DF|Defender

Player of the Season

Young Player of the Season