2026–27 UEFA Champions League


The 2026–27 UEFA Champions League will be the 72nd season of Europe's premier football tournament organized by UEFA and the 35th season since it was rebranded from the European Cup to the UEFA Champions League.
The final will be played on 5 June 2027 at the Metropolitano Stadium in Madrid, Spain. It will be the second time the Metropolitano Stadium has hosted the UEFA Champions League final after the 2019 UEFA Champions League Final. The winners of the 2026–27 UEFA Champions League will automatically qualify for the 2027–28 UEFA Champions League league phase, the 2027 FIFA Intercontinental Cup Final, the 2029 FIFA Club World Cup group stage and earn the right to play against the winners of the 2026–27 UEFA Europa League in the 2027 UEFA Super Cup.

Association team allocation

A total of 83 teams from 53 of the 55 UEFA member associations are set to participate in the 2026–27 UEFA Champions League. The association ranking based on the UEFA association coefficients is used to determine the number of participating teams for each association:
  • Associations 1–5 each have four teams.
  • Association 6 has three teams.
  • Associations 7–15 each have two teams.
  • Associations 16–55 each have one team.
  • The winners of the 2025–26 UEFA Champions League and 2025–26 UEFA Europa League are each given an additional entry if they do not qualify for the 2026–27 UEFA Champions League through their domestic league.
  • The two associations with the best coefficients in the 2025–26 season will each have one European Performance Spot into the league phase. The winners of the UEFA Champions League and Europa League cannot fill the European Performance Spots.

Association ranking

For the 2026–27 UEFA Champions League, the associations are allocated places according to their 2025 UEFA association coefficients, which takes into account their performance in European competitions from 2020–21 to 2024–25. The table reflects Russia's ongoing suspension from UEFA.
Apart from the allocation based on the association coefficients, associations may have additional teams participating in the Champions League, as noted below:

Distribution

The information here reflects the ongoing suspension of Russia in European football, and so the following changes to the default access list have been made:
  • The champion of association 23 will enter 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:
  • TH: Champions League title holders
  • EL: Europa League title holders
  • 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc.: League positions of the previous season
  • EPS: European Performance Spots – the additional berths given to clubs from the two associations with the highest coefficient points in 2025–26
The label of European Performance Spots and title holders already qualified via league position are superscripted.
The second qualifying round, third qualifying round and play-off round are divided into Champions Path and League Path.

Schedule

The schedule of the competition is as follows.