The format of the Champions League is set to undergo drastic changes, with UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin announcing in March that from the start of the 2024/25 season, 36 teams will compete in Europe's elite club competition.
Taking the total number of teams from 32 to 36 in the Champions League, the biggest change will see a transformation from the traditional group stage to a single league phase that includes all participating teams.
Each team will play eight matches, half at home and half away, with all eight taking place over a ten-week period.
With these extra teams and extra games, the new Champions League format will have 189 matches instead of 125.
The top eight sides in the league will qualify automatically for the knockout stage, while teams finishing 9th to 24th will compete in a two-legged play-off to secure their path to the last 16 of the competition.
The revamped competition also means it's likely a fifth Premier League club will compete in the Champions League, due to the extra four places being added to the competition across Europe.
UEFA has announced two of the four slots will go to the nations whose clubs achieve the best collective performance in Europe in the season before. For example, if the new rules had applied for this campaign, the two extra places would have gone to clubs from England and the Netherlands.
Indeed, in four of the past five campaigns, a team in the Premier League would have received one of the additional slots.
One of the other slots will go to the club ranked third in the championship of the fifth-placed nation in the UEFA national association ranking (this would be France based on current standings).
The final extra spot will go to a domestic champion by extending from four to five the number of clubs qualifying via the so-called “Champions Path”.
Other changes include clubs from the same country having the possibility of facing each other in the last 16 or even play-off spots, rather than the current quarter-final stipulation.
Similar changes are afoot in both the Europa League and Europa Conference League, with league phases set to be implemented in each. Clubs in the Europa League will play eight matches, while there will be only six matches in the Europa Conference League league phase.
Both competitions will start with 36 teams.
