How clubs qualify for Europe — and how the 36-club league phase works
Why England sends four clubs to the Champions League and the Netherlands one, what a "European Performance Spot" is, and how one 36-club table replaced the group stage.
A league table in Europe is really two competitions at once: the race for the title, and the race for the places that lead into next season's UEFA competitions. How many places a league gets is not fixed. It is earned.
The access list
UEFA ranks its member associations by how their clubs have performed in European competition over recent seasons, and that ranking decides each association's places. For the Champions League, the regulations give the top-ranked associations four representatives each — the clubs finishing first to fourth in the domestic league — and guarantee the holders of the Champions League and Europa League a place in the league phase as well.
Further down the ranking the allocation thins out quickly. For 2027–28, which this season's tables decide:
| League | Straight into the Champions League league phase | Into Champions League qualifying |
|---|---|---|
| Premier League, Serie A, La Liga, Bundesliga | 1st–4th | — |
| Ligue 1 | 1st–3rd | 4th |
| Primeira Liga | 1st–2nd | 3rd |
| Eredivisie | 1st | 2nd |
| Scottish Premiership | — | 1st |
The Netherlands is the cautionary tale in that table: it has slipped to seventh in the ranking, so only its champions are guaranteed a league-phase place. Rankings move, and places move with them — which is why this site marks European zones from the current access list and says under each table what could still change them.
Below the Champions League sit the Europa League and the Conference League, fed by the next league positions and by domestic cup winners. When a cup winner has already qualified through the league, the place passes down the table — another reason "fifth gets Europe" is a rule of thumb rather than a law.
The four places that were added in 2024
When the Champions League grew from 32 clubs to 36 in 2024–25, UEFA allocated the four new places like this:
- One to the club finishing third in the association ranked fifth.
- One more to a domestic champion, by widening the champions' qualifying path from four clubs to five.
- and 4. Two European Performance Spots, for the two associations whose clubs collectively did best in Europe in the previous season.
Those last two are why a league's fifth-placed club can end up in the Champions League. They cannot be known until the European season is over, so no table on this site draws that line in advance.
One table, eight opponents
The group stage is gone. All 36 clubs now sit in one league table, and each plays eight matches against eight different opponents — four at home and four away. The Europa League uses the same format; the Conference League plays six.
When the league phase ends:
- 1st to 8th go straight to the round of 16.
- 9th to 24th meet in a two-legged knockout play-off for the other eight places, with ninth to sixteenth seeded.
- 25th to 36th are out of Europe altogether. There is no longer a drop into the Europa League.
Clubs level on points are separated by goal difference, then goals scored, then away goals scored, then wins, then away wins — and, after that, by criteria that look at how strong their eight opponents turned out to be. This site computes the first four and names the rest.
After the league phase
From the knockout play-offs to the semi-finals, every tie is played over two legs. If the aggregate is level after the second leg, there are two 15-minute periods of extra time, and then penalties. Away goals do not count double: UEFA's Executive Committee abolished that rule on 24 June 2021, from the qualifying rounds of the 2021–22 season. The final is a single match at a venue chosen in advance.
For how aggregate scores work in practice — and how they differ in South America and Mexico — see two-legged ties and aggregate scores.
What this site can show
Our Champions League and Europa League scores come from OpenLigaDB, an openly licensed community database: real scores and scorers, usually within minutes, with no guarantee. The Champions League hub says so on the page.