UEFA has announced significant changes to the Women’s Champions League starting from the 2025/26 season, including an expanded group stage and a new format for determining the fixtures and progression in the league.

These changes mark a pivotal shift in women’s football, with implications for teams across Europe

Uefa have disclosed the new format for the women champions league as well as the format for the second competition to start from 2025/26

What is changing?

The Group stage will now have 18 teams instead of 16 teams. The number of games played at the group stage will not change, teams will still play six games:

Under the new format, teams will no longer play three opponents twice – home and away – but will instead face fixtures against six different teams in the league stage, playing half of those matches at home and half of them away.

To determine the six different opponents, the teams will be ranked in three seeding pots based on their latest club-coefficient ranking. To ensure a balanced level of opposition for all and a balanced calendar, each team will then be drawn to play two opponents from each of these pots, playing one match against a team from each pot at home, and one away.

Ranking the side in the Group Stage

The results of each match will decide the overall ranking in the new league, with three points for a win, one for a draw and none for a defeat. The new format, with all the teams ranked together in a single league, will mean that there is more to play for all the way through to the final night of the league phase where all the matches will kick off at the same time. The top four sides in the league will qualify automatically for the quarter-finals, while the teams finishing in 5th to 12th place will compete in a two-legged knock-out phase play-off to secure their path to the last eight. Teams ranked 13 to 18 will be eliminated.

Knock-out stage make-up:

The four clubs which prevail in the knockout phase play-offs will then progress to the quarter-finals, where they will each face one of the top-four finishers, who will be seeded and will play the second leg of the quarter-final at home.

From the quarter-finals onwards, the competition will follow its existing format of knockout rounds leading to the final staged at a neutral venue selected by UEFA.

The second and new women’s competition

The format

Thirteen teams, the third-placed teams in the domestic league from associations ranked 8-13 and the runners-up of associations ranked 18-24, will enter the competition directly while a feeding system from the UEFA Women’s Champions League will see the new competition offer a second chance to the clubs eliminated in Round 2 as well as the runners-up and third-placed teams from the Round 1 tournaments

We see that like the men’s competitions, teams will drop down from the Champions League to the second tier competition.

The second competition will be a straight knockout, played in parallel to the Women’s Champions League. It will feature a total of six rounds, Rounds 1, 2 and the round of 16, quarter-finals, semi-finals and final will of which will be played over two legs (home and away).

The winners will automatically qualify for the second round of the champions path of the next season’s UEFA Women’s Champions League, with one round to negotiate for a place in the league stage.

And unlike in the men’s tournament, the second competition winner does not directly qualify for the WCL the following season, only for the Champions Path round 2 and that’s quite unfair imo.

And now for the punchline: the reformed access list to the Women Champions League tournament.

Until 2025/26 the 16 teams were split as:

Title Holder + top three Association champions direct to Group Stage. 25% of the field Champions path seven teams qualified 43.75% of the field League path five teams qualified 31.25% of the field.

From 2025/26 the 18 teams will be split as:

Title holder + top six association champions + top two associations runner-ups will go direct to the Group Stage 50% Champions path four teams will qualify 22.22% League path five teams will qualify 27.77%

Uefa have clearly decided to protect the big nations by allowing 50% of the field to qualify directly. Now it is clearly a business choice to have the bigger names in the Group Stage, but the huge reduction of places available to smaller nations’ champions leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.