New Champions League format reshapes access as Newcastle, Villarreal benefit

Newcastle United do not arrive in this season’s Champions League as English champions or runners-up, but as a statistical byproduct of Europe’s changing shape.

Thanks to a new access system that rewards countries whose clubs performed best in UEFA competitions last year, Newcastle have been handed a place in the 2025–26 Champions League league phase, even though they finished outside the Premier League’s traditional top four. Villarreal are in on the same basis from Spain. Across the draw, Greek champions Olympiacos have moved straight into the main stage because Paris Saint-Germain qualified twice — once as French champions and again as defending European titleholders.

Those quirks are the visible face of a quiet revolution. The 2025–26 campaign is only the second season of the redesigned Champions League, but the new format has already rewired how Europe’s most lucrative competition looks, feels and is reached.

From groups to a 36-team league phase

The traditional 32-team group stage, in place in one form or another since 1999, has been scrapped. In its place is a 36-team “league phase” in which every club plays eight games — four at home and four away — against eight different opponents. All 36 are ranked in a single table.

The consequences are stark:

• Top eight after eight games advance directly to the round of 16.
• Teams finishing ninth to 24th enter a two-legged playoff for the remaining eight knockout places, with teams nine to 16 seeded against teams 17 to 24.
• Clubs that finish 25th to 36th are eliminated from European competition altogether.

There is no longer any safety net for strugglers. Under the old system, teams finishing third in a four-team group parachuted into the Europa League. That cushion no longer exists.

“This new format supports the status and future of the domestic game throughout Europe,” UEFA president Aleksander Čeferin said when the changes were approved. He described the reforms as “ensuring qualification is based purely on sporting performance” and said the new model would “improve the competitive balance and generate solid revenues that can be distributed to clubs, leagues and into grassroots football across our continent.”

How the reforms were agreed

The shift was agreed in two stages. On April 19, 2021, UEFA’s executive committee signed off on the broad concept of a “Swiss system” league, just as 12 elite clubs briefly attempted to launch a breakaway European Super League. On May 10, 2022, in Vienna, UEFA finalized the details: the competition would expand from 32 to 36 teams, and each would play eight league-phase matches rather than the 10 initially proposed.

One of the most contentious ideas in early drafts — awarding extra Champions League places on the basis of historic club coefficients — was dropped. Instead, UEFA created a mechanism it calls “European Performance Spots.”

Each season, two additional places in the league phase are given to the national associations whose clubs collectively perform best across the Champions League, Europa League and Europa Conference League. The spots go to the highest-placed teams in those domestic leagues that have not already qualified for the Champions League.

For 2025–26, that system has benefited England and Spain, sending Newcastle and Villarreal into the league phase.

Who gets in—and why Olympiacos moved up

The 36-team field is assembled through a mix of automatic league entries, titleholder places and qualifying rounds. It includes the Champions League and Europa League winners — this time PSG and Tottenham Hotspur — as well as champions and high-placed finishers from across the continent.

Where a titleholder such as PSG also qualifies via its domestic league, the “spare” place is passed down a pre-defined ladder in the access list. In this cycle that process has elevated Olympiacos, the Greek champion, directly into the league phase.

The final pieces are filled through qualifying rounds: five clubs from a “Champions Path” reserved for domestic titleholders, and two from a “League Path” for non-champions. In 2025–26, that route has brought in clubs including Bodø/Glimt of Norway, Copenhagen of Denmark, Kairat Almaty of Kazakhstan, Pafos of Cyprus, Qarabag of Azerbaijan, Benfica of Portugal and Club Brugge of Belgium.

A draw powered by software

Once the 36 teams are known, they are seeded into four pots of nine based on UEFA’s club coefficients. The Champions League titleholder is always placed in Pot 1 regardless of ranking. The pots do not create mini-groups; they are used to shape the draw and the balance of opposition.

UEFA has overhauled the draw process to cope with the additional complexity. All 36 names are still drawn manually from bowls at a public ceremony, but specialized software then randomly assigns eight opponents to each club, two from each pot, while applying a dense web of constraints.

Clubs cannot face teams from their own national association and cannot face more than two opponents from any single country. Each club must host and visit at least one team from each pot. UEFA says attempting to perform the draw under the old, purely manual system would require “nearly 1,000 balls” and result in an “unbearably lengthy” event.

The draw algorithm is reviewed by an independent auditor, and fixtures are scheduled only after the opponents are known, in coordination with the Europa League and Conference League. The league phase now runs over 10 designated midweeks, with eight matchdays and two weeks held in reserve, stretching into January rather than finishing before Christmas as the old group stage did.

More matches, more money—and higher stakes

The mathematical effect is a significant expansion of content. The 32-team group stage produced 96 matches. The 36-team league phase produces 144. Knockout rounds remain two-legged through the semifinals, followed by a single-match final at a neutral venue.

That extra inventory underpins a larger commercial program. UEFA’s latest club competition financial reports describe the 2024–27 cycle as the most radical change in a quarter-century and link the new format to rising broadcast and sponsorship revenue. European media estimates suggest the Champions League prize pot has increased substantially since the last season under the old format, though those funds are now distributed across more clubs and more rounds.

On the field, UEFA has presented early data from the 2024–25 season to argue the league phase has delivered “more dynamic, more unpredictable” football. It has highlighted an uptick in average points gained by teams seeded in the lowest pot, from about 0.7 points per game in the previous group-stage cycle to roughly 1 point per game in the new format.

The new structure has also generated more high-profile fixtures in the autumn as clubs from the top pots are drawn against a wider range of opponents. That was one of the attractions for the biggest teams, which had long pushed for more meetings with other heavyweights.

At the same time, the competitive and logistical stakes have changed for everyone else. With only eight matches to set positions in a 36-team table, there is little room to recover from a slow start. A single defeat against a direct rival can be the difference between the relative comfort of a top-eight finish, the jeopardy of a February playoff or the sudden end of a European campaign.

The new playoff round for places nine to 24 adds another peak of intensity in the calendar. For broadcasters and sponsors, it is an extra knockout window. For coaches and medical staff, it is another set of high-stakes minutes for players already balancing domestic leagues, national cups and international duty.

Fixture congestion and player welfare concerns were central to the decision to scale back the league phase from 10 matches to eight. Even so, moving Champions League matchdays deeper into winter, and expanding the geographic reach of the competition, has increased travel demands. Away sides and their supporters now face midweek journeys that can stretch from the Atlantic coast to Central Asia.

Knock-on effects across Europe

The changes ripple into other UEFA competitions. The Europa League and Europa Conference League have adopted similar 36-team league phases, with six or eight matches per club. Crucially, the end of downward movement from the Champions League means those tournaments now proceed without the late arrival of teams eliminated from the top tier.

UEFA has emphasized that the reforms were agreed unanimously by its executive committee and supported by the European Club Association, the European Leagues grouping and national federations. Officials have repeatedly framed the new Champions League as a compromise: an expanded, more commercially attractive format that preserves open access through domestic performance rather than creating a closed league.

With the second season of the league phase now under way, that balance is being tested in real time. The 2025–26 lineup — stretching from Paris and Madrid to Pafos and Almaty, and including six English clubs and five from Spain — offers an early map of who gains from the new system and who must fight harder to keep pace.

How clubs adapt to the altered odds of qualification, the risk of an early exit and the lure of additional revenue will help determine not only who lifts the trophy in 2026, but how European football’s most important competition continues to evolve beyond this first wave of reform.