2025–26 UEFA Conference League


The 2025–26 UEFA Conference League is the fifth season of the UEFA Conference League, Europe's tertiary club football tournament organised by UEFA.
This is the second UEFA Conference League played under a new format involving a 36-team league phase. The new format also does not allow teams to transfer from the Europa League to the Conference League from the league phase onwards, and thus the Conference League titleholders are unable to defend their title as the winner of the Conference League automatically qualifies for the Europa League league phase. However, Chelsea had already qualified for the 2025–26 UEFA Champions League league phase via their domestic league position prior to winning the Conference League, so the automatic berth in the Europa League was not required and the access list was rebalanced.
The final will be played at the Red Bull Arena in Leipzig, Germany. The winners of the tournament will automatically qualify for the 2026–27 UEFA Europa League league phase, unless they qualify for the 2026–27 UEFA Champions League or Europa League through their league performance. In which case, the access list will be rebalanced.

Association team allocation

A total of 164 teams from 54 of the 55 UEFA member associations are participating in the 2025–26 UEFA Conference League. The association ranking based on the UEFA association coefficients was used to determine the number of participating teams for each association:
  • Associations 1–12 each have one team.
  • Associations 13–33 and 51–55 each have two teams.
  • Associations 34–50 each have three teams.
  • 15 teams eliminated from the 2025–26 UEFA Champions League and 41 teams eliminated from the 2025–26 UEFA Europa League were transferred to the Conference League.

Association ranking

For the 2025–26 UEFA Conference League, the associations were allocated places according to their 2024 UEFA association coefficients, which took into account their performance in European competitions from 2019–20 to 2023–24.
Apart from the allocation based on the association coefficients, associations could have additional teams participating in the Conference League, as noted below:

Distribution

The following is the access list for this season.
The information here reflects the ongoing suspension of Russia in European football, and so the following changes to the default access list were made:
  • The cup winners of associations 39 to 44 entered the second qualifying round instead of the first qualifying round.
  • As a result of corresponding changes to the Champions League access list, there was one fewer loser from the Champions League first qualifying round transferred to the Conference League second qualifying round so one transferred team received a bye to the third qualifying round.
As the Champions League title holders qualified for the Champions League via their domestic league's standard berth allocation, the following changes to the default access list were made:
  • As a result of corresponding changes to the Champions League access list, there was one fewer loser from the Champions League first qualifying round transferred to the Conference League second qualifying round, so one transferred team received a bye to the third qualifying round.
As the Conference League title holders qualified for the Champions League phase via their domestic league's standard berth allocation, the following changes to the default access list were made:
  • The cup winners of association 34 entered the Europa League first qualifying round instead of the second qualifying round.
  • The cup winners of associations 45 and 46 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:
  • CW: Domestic cup winners
  • 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, etc.: League position of the previous season
  • LC: League cup winners
  • RW: Regular season winners
  • PW: End-of-season Conference League play-offs winners
  • CL: Transferred from the Champions League
  • *Q1: Losers from the first qualifying round
  • EL: Transferred from the Europa League
  • *PO: Losers from the play-off round
  • *CH/MP Q3: Losers from the third qualifying round
  • *Q2: Losers from the second qualifying round
  • *Q1: Losers from the first qualifying round
The second qualifying round, third qualifying round and play-off round were divided into Champions Path and Main Path.
Two teams not playing in a national top division took part in the competition: Vaduz and Spaeri.
'''Notes'''

Schedule

The schedule of the competition is as follows. Matches are scheduled for Thursdays, with an exclusive day of 18 December, apart from the final, which takes place on a Wednesday, though exceptionally can take place on Tuesdays or Wednesdays due to scheduling conflicts.

League phase

The Conference League league phase comprised the 24 winners of the Conference League play-off round, as well as 12 losers of the Europa League play-off round.
The league phase draw for the 2025–26 UEFA Conference League took place at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco on 29 August 2025. The 36 teams were divided into six pots of six teams each based on their UEFA club coefficient.
The draw ceremony was held along with the league phase draw for the 2025–26 UEFA Europa League, as a change from the previous season. In the previous season's draw the 36 teams were manually drawn one at a time; this season's draw was entirely computer generated with all 36 teams' opponents and home/away locations drawn at once, but revealed pot by pot. Each team faced one opponent from each of the six pots, with one home and one away match from each pot pair of Pots 1 and 2, Pots 3 and 4, and Pots 5 and 6. Teams could not face opponents from their own association, and could only be drawn against a maximum of two sides from the same association.
Crystal Palace, Drita, Hamrun Spartans, KuPS, Rayo Vallecano, Samsunspor, Shelbourne, Shkëndija, Sigma Olomouc and Universitatea Craiova made their debut appearances in a major UEFA competition group or league phase. Hamrun Spartans were the first team from Malta to play in a major UEFA competition group stage or league phase.
A total of 29 national associations were represented in the league phase. Poland were the first country to have four clubs play in the Conference League group stage/league phase, and it was also the first time in history that four Polish clubs competed in any edition of a UEFA competition group stage or league phase.

Table

The top eight ranked teams received a bye to the round of 16. The teams ranked from 9th to 24th will contest the knockout phase play-offs, with the teams ranked from 9th to 16th seeded for the draw. Teams ranked from 25th to 36th were eliminated from European competition.

Knockout phase

In the knockout phase, teams will play against each other over two legs on a home-and-away basis, except for the one-match final. The bracket structure for the knockout phase is partially fixed in advance using seeding, with teams' positions in the bracket determined by the final standings in the league phase.

Statistics

Statistics exclude qualifying rounds and play-off round.
''Table correct as of 18 December 2025.''