How does the new-format UEFA Champions League work?

>>> Find out who Bundesliga clubs will face in Europe this year

More teams involved

The first big change is in how many teams get to play in the Champions League. For over two decades, we’ve been used to 32 clubs going into eight groups of four. As of 2024/25, there will be 36 teams.

The basis for qualification remains the same as in recent years, ultimately determined by a team’s position in their domestic league. In the case of the Bundesliga, as one of the top ranked leagues per UEFA’s coefficient system, the teams that finish in the top four all qualify automatically for the Champions League.

For the four extra berths, one goes to the league ranked fifth in the coefficients, another to an additional domestic champion. As things stand, those do not concern German clubs.

What does impact Bundesliga teams is the so-called ‘European Performance Spots’, used to allocate the remaining two additional teams. As per UEFA, “These places will go to the associations with the best collective performance by their clubs in the previous season (i.e. the association club coefficient of the previous season, which is based on the total number of club coefficient points obtained by each club from an association divided by the number of participating clubs from that association).

In other words, the better a country’s clubs do in European competition one season, the better their chance of earning an extra place in the Champions League the year after, as the Bundesliga did for 2024/25.

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