Champions League vs Europa League: The Differences
Champions League vs Europa League for English fans: how UEFA's three club competitions rank, who qualifies from the UK and how the format, money and nights differ.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished European Football24 min read
- Clubs in each league phase
- 36
- League-phase matches, Champions and Europa League
- 8
- League-phase matches, Conference League
- 6
- Mid-season drop between competitions ended
- 2024-25
On a Wednesday night in May, a club can lift a trophy in front of a full stadium and know, before the bus leaves the ground, that it will be playing on Tuesday and Wednesday nights the following autumn. Tottenham Hotspur did exactly that in Bilbao in May 2025. They had finished seventeenth in the Premier League. Winning the Europa League put them into the Champions League anyway, and that single fact explains the relationship between the two competitions better than any diagram.
The short answer is this. The Champions League, the Europa League and the Conference League are three tiers of one pyramid, all run by UEFA on one shared calendar. The Champions League takes each country's best league finishers and pays by far the most. The Europa League takes the next group down, along with the domestic cup winners of the bigger leagues, and plays on Thursday. The Conference League takes the third rank and also plays on Thursday. Since 2024-25 all three use a single 36-club league table rather than groups, with eight matches each in the top two and six in the third. Winners move up a tier for the next season. Nobody moves down mid-season any more.
Three tiers of one UEFA pyramid, run on one calendar
It helps to think of UEFA's club football the way an English fan thinks of the league system below the Premier League. There is a top division, a second and a third. Places in each are earned by performance at home, and the reward for winning a lower tier is a place in the one above.
The comparison breaks down in one respect. In domestic football a club plays in only one division. In European football a club enters only one of the three competitions in a given season, but which one depends on a combination of where it finished in its own league, whether it won a domestic cup, the strength of its national association and, for a minority, what happened in summer qualifying.
UEFA treats the three as one product. They share a calendar built so that they never clash: Tuesday and Wednesday belong to the Champions League, Thursday to the other two. They share a format, a set of disciplinary regulations, a refereeing structure and, from 2024, a common league-phase design. They also share a single coefficient system, so a win in the Conference League earns an English club and England the same two points as a win in the Champions League, although the bonus points for taking part and for reaching each knockout round are smaller in the lower two. How those points accumulate is covered in our guide to the UEFA coefficient.
Why the order is not in doubt
Some supporters argue about whether the Europa League is really second or merely different. The regulations settle it. The Europa League winner is promoted to the Champions League. The Conference League winner is promoted to the Europa League. Champions League qualifying losers are dropped into the Europa League, and Europa League qualifying losers into the Conference League. The traffic only ever moves one way in each direction, which is what makes it a hierarchy.
The money says the same thing, as a later section sets out, and so does the field. A club that finishes fourth in the Premier League would not swap its place for a Europa League one, and no Europa League club would refuse a promotion.
| Champions League | Europa League | Conference League | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tier | First | Second | Third |
| Clubs in the league phase | 36 | 36 | 36 |
| League-phase matches per club | 8 | 8 | 6 |
| Usual match nights | Tuesday and Wednesday | Thursday | Thursday |
| First season under its current name | 1992-93 | 2009-10 | 2024-25 |
| Winner's reward | European champion | Champions League place | Europa League place |
Who goes where from England: league position and the two domestic cups
England's allocation is set by its place in UEFA's association ranking, and English clubs reach each competition by three routes. League position is the main one. The FA Cup and the Carabao Cup each carry a European place as well, but not in the same competition.
As the access list has stood in recent seasons, the top four in the Premier League go straight into the Champions League league phase. The fifth-placed club goes into the Europa League league phase. The FA Cup winner also goes into the Europa League league phase. The Carabao Cup winner gets the Conference League place, entering at the play-off round in August rather than the league phase.
That is the starting position. It moves for two reasons.
The first is the cup winners themselves. If the FA Cup or the Carabao Cup is won by a club that has already qualified through the league, its cup place does not go to the beaten finalist. It passes down the Premier League table, so sixth or seventh can end up in Europe. A mid-table club's season can therefore depend on a cup final it did not play in.
The second is England's own performance. From 2024-25 UEFA awards two extra Champions League places to the two associations whose clubs collected the best average coefficient points in the previous season. Italy and Germany took the first two, for 2024-25. England earned one for 2025-26, which took Newcastle United into the Champions League from fifth place and pushed every other place down one. Our guide to the European Performance Spot sets out the calculation. Because it depends on results across a season, nobody knows until spring whether fifth place is a Champions League or a Europa League finish.
The two cups compared
The gap between the two domestic cups is easy to miss. The FA Cup is the older and more prestigious competition, and it carries the higher European reward: a Europa League place. The Carabao Cup's reward is the Conference League. A club that wins both does not double up; it takes the better place and the other passes down the table.
| Route from England | Competition reached | Stage of entry |
|---|---|---|
| Premier League 1st to 4th | Champions League | League phase |
| European Performance Spot, when England earns it | Champions League | League phase |
| Premier League 5th, in a normal year | Europa League | League phase |
| FA Cup winner | Europa League | League phase |
| Carabao Cup winner | Conference League | Play-off round |
| Europa League winner, whatever its league finish | Champions League | League phase |
Every row in that table is subject to the reallocation rules. A full walk through the Premier League side of it, including the order in which places pass down the table, is in our explainer on how Premier League clubs qualify for Europe.
UEFA's licensing rules sit over the top of all this. A club must hold a UEFA licence issued through the FA, and it must satisfy UEFA's rules on multi-club ownership, which bar two clubs under common control from playing in the same competition. Those rules have moved English clubs between competitions before a ball was kicked, which is the reason any table like the one above needs a footnote.
The shared format and where it differs: one table of 36 in each
For most of their history the three competitions were organised differently, and a supporter who understood one did not automatically understand the next. The 2024 reform tidied that up. All three now use the same skeleton, adopted from a version of the Swiss system used in chess.
Each competition has a league phase of 36 clubs in a single table. Clubs do not play everybody; they play a set number of different opponents drawn by computer from seeded pots. At the end, the top eight go straight to the round of 16. The clubs placed ninth to 24th play a two-legged knockout phase play-off for the other eight places in the round of 16, with the higher-placed clubs playing the second leg at home. The bottom twelve are out. From the round of 16 onwards it is two-legged knockout football to a one-match final.
Eight matches against six
The difference is in the number of matches. In the Champions League and the Europa League, clubs are drawn into four pots of nine and play two opponents from each pot, one at home and one away. That makes eight matches. In the Conference League there are six pots of six, and each club plays one opponent from each pot, three at home and three away. That makes six.
Two fewer matches matters. The Conference League's league phase finishes in December, before the winter break in most countries, while the top two run into late January. For a Premier League club that means two fewer midweek fixtures in the busiest stretch of the domestic season, which is a small mercy and one that supporters of clubs in the third competition tend to undervalue until February arrives.
The other thing worth knowing is that the bottom of the table is final. There is no consolation route. Finish 25th in the Champions League league phase and the European season is over, where under the old format third place in a group meant a second life in the Europa League.
Movement between them: winners promoted, and no more mid-season drops
The two directions of travel used to be equally important. Now only one of them matters during a season.
Promotion is straightforward. The Europa League winner qualifies for the next season's Champions League league phase. UEFA introduced that from the 2014-15 competition, and it changed how English clubs treated the Europa League almost overnight, because a trophy became a back door into the most valuable competition in club football. Manchester United in 2016-17 and Tottenham in 2024-25 both reached the Champions League that way after league seasons that would not have taken them there. The Conference League winner is promoted in the same fashion into the Europa League.
The drop that disappeared
Relegation mid-season was the more unusual mechanism, and it ran for a quarter of a century, from 1999-2000 to 2023-24. Under the group format, the club finishing third in a Champions League group did not go home. It dropped into the Europa League knockout rounds in February, and from 2021-22 the third-placed clubs in Europa League groups dropped into the Conference League in the same way.
It produced some odd outcomes. Chelsea went out of the Champions League group stage as holders in December 2012 and won the Europa League in Amsterdam five months later. Arsenal reached the 2000 UEFA Cup final after falling out of the Champions League group stage the previous autumn, and lost it on penalties to Galatasaray, who had made the same journey. Manchester United dropped into the Europa League in 2015-16 and were knocked out by Liverpool.
The objection to all this was obvious. Clubs that had already failed in one competition were arriving in another as favourites, and Europa League clubs that had played six group matches to reach the knockout rounds were drawn against them. The 2024 reform ended it. A club now plays in one competition for the whole season once its league phase begins, and the only route down is in summer qualifying, which is covered at the end of this page.
- Summer qualifyingClubs beaten in Champions League qualifying drop into the Europa League or the Conference League, depending on the round.
- League phase beginsFrom the first league-phase match, a club stays in its competition for the rest of the season.
- League phase endsThe top 24 continue, positions 9 to 24 through a play-off; the bottom 12 are out with no drop to another competition.
- FinalThe Europa League winner is promoted to the next Champions League; the Conference League winner to the next Europa League.
Under the format used from 2024-25. Reallocation rules apply when a winner has already qualified another way.
Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday: Champions League vs Europa League on the calendar
The quickest way to tell the competitions apart on a fixture list is the day. Champions League matches are played on Tuesday and Wednesday. Europa League and Conference League matches are played on Thursday. UEFA built the calendar that way so that each competition has its own broadcast nights and none of them competes with another for an audience.
There are exceptions. In some weeks one competition has the whole of the midweek to itself, and the finals are not on the usual nights: the Champions League final is played on a Saturday, and the Europa League and Conference League finals on Wednesdays in the preceding weeks. Each night has two kick-off slots, an early evening one and a later one.
For a Premier League club the day has consequences that reach the weekend. A club playing on Thursday will not be asked to play on Saturday, so its league fixture is moved to Sunday or Monday. A Champions League club on Tuesday or Wednesday can still play on Saturday. The full explanation of the Thursday arrangement, its history and what it does to a club's week is in our guide to why the Europa League is on Thursday, and the point here is a narrower one: the day is part of the hierarchy. Champions League clubs get the better nights and the more conventional weekend.
The money gap from one tier to the next
UEFA does not publish one prize figure that applies for ever. It sets a distribution for each three-year commercial cycle and adjusts it as the broadcast contracts come in. What does not change much is the shape, and the shape is steep.
On UEFA's distribution for the 2024-27 cycle, the pot for the Champions League is a little over four times the size of the Europa League's, and the Europa League's is roughly twice the Conference League's. Each club's share is then built from the same components in all three competitions: a starting fee for reaching the league phase, performance payments for wins and draws, a bonus based on final position in the league phase, payments for each knockout round reached, and what UEFA calls the value pillar, which combines a share of broadcast income with a ranking based on the club's ten-year coefficient.
Why the gap is wider than the prize table suggests
The UEFA distribution is only the first of three income streams.
Matchday revenue is the second. A Champions League tie against a famous opponent sells out at higher prices than a Thursday night league-phase match, and hospitality sells at a different level again. A club in the Conference League may struggle to fill its ground for a December home match against an unknown opponent, especially if it is playing on a cold weekday with a 5.45pm kick-off.
Commercial value is the third, and the hardest to measure. Sponsorship contracts at the largest English clubs commonly carry clauses tied to Champions League participation. Players' contracts do too. A club's budget is often built around the assumption of Champions League football, and missing it creates a shortfall that the Europa League does not close.
The practical result is that the jump from the Europa League to the Champions League is worth far more than the jump from the Conference League to the Europa League. A club that wins the Europa League is buying its way into a different financial bracket for the following season. A club that wins the Conference League is moving up one step. That asymmetry explains a lot of English clubs' behaviour in the spring.
There is one more effect, felt by the rest of the Premier League. Because these sums go only to the clubs that qualify, the gap between the regular European clubs and everyone else grows each season they qualify. The Premier League's own distribution is relatively even. UEFA's is not, and it is UEFA's money that has separated the top of the table from the middle.
Strength of field, and why the Europa League gets harder after February
The Champions League takes the champions of the strongest leagues and their nearest challengers, plus a handful of clubs that come through summer qualifying. Its league phase is uneven, with some clubs from smaller associations that came through the champions path of qualifying, but its knockout rounds are dominated by clubs from England, Spain, Germany, Italy and France.
The Europa League's league phase is more mixed. It has clubs from the major leagues that finished fifth or sixth or won a domestic cup, alongside champions of mid-ranking associations who lost in Champions League qualifying, and a larger number of clubs from Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Turkey and Greece. A Premier League club in the Europa League can expect a mix of opponents, several of them comfortably weaker on paper.
The later rounds are another competition
Here the old format and the new give slightly different answers, and it is better to be precise.
Under the group format, the Europa League's knockout rounds were harder than its groups because eight Champions League clubs arrived in February. That stopped in 2024. The later rounds are still harder than the league phase, but for a simpler reason. The weaker clubs drop away. The knockout phase play-off removes eight of the 24, the round of 16 halves what remains, and by the quarter-finals the competition usually contains the strongest few clubs from the major leagues plus one or two experienced sides from Portugal or the Netherlands who have been playing knockout football for years.
That raises the question English fans argue about most: which is harder to win. The Champions League is harder, and not by a small margin; its quarter-finals regularly contain four or five of the best-resourced clubs in Europe. A Europa League run is still a long competition, at least 15 matches for a club that starts in the league phase and reaches the final, and one that a Premier League club can lose to a Portuguese or German side on a bad night. "Easier" is relative. It is a different difficulty, more matches against slightly weaker sides, with the travel and the Thursday-Sunday pattern added on top.
The Conference League is a further step down in average quality, but it can have a strong favourite or two. When a Premier League club enters it, the club is usually the best-resourced in the competition by a distance, and that is why West Ham in 2023 and Chelsea in 2025 were expected to win it, and did.
The trophies and their histories: 1955, 1971 and 2021
The three competitions did not grow out of one design. They were created decades apart for different reasons, and the names they carry now are not the names they were founded under.
The European Cup came first, in 1955-56, organised by UEFA after a proposal from the French sports newspaper L'Équipe. It was a straight knockout for national champions, played home and away, and Real Madrid won the first five finals. The Football League would not let Chelsea, the English champions, take part in the first season, and Manchester United entered the following year against the League's wishes. It became the UEFA Champions League in 1992-93, with a group stage and a brand built around an anthem and a starball. Our guide to how the European Cup became the Champions League covers that change in full.
The UEFA Cup began in 1971-72. It replaced the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, a competition originally designed around trade fairs that UEFA had never directly run. The first UEFA Cup final was an all-English affair, Tottenham beating Wolverhampton Wanderers over two legs. It absorbed the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1999-2000, took on a group stage in 2004-05 and was renamed the Europa League in 2009-10.
The Conference League is the newcomer. UEFA launched it in 2021-22 as the Europa Conference League, partly to give clubs from smaller associations more European football after the Champions League and Europa League had been reshaped around the larger countries. It dropped "Europa" from its name in 2024-25. Roma won the first final in Tirana.
The trophies
The Champions League trophy is the one with the big handles, and a club that wins it no longer keeps the original; UEFA retains it and awards a full-size replica. The Europa League trophy is the old UEFA Cup, a large silver cup designed by Silvio Gazzaniga and, at around 15kg, one of the heaviest trophies in European football. The Conference League trophy was made new for the competition's first season. None of those details changes the competition, but supporters notice which trophy their club lifts.
| Competition | First season | Previous names | First winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Champions League | 1955-56 | European Champion Clubs' Cup | Real Madrid |
| Europa League | 1971-72 | UEFA Cup | Tottenham Hotspur |
| Conference League | 2021-22 | Europa Conference League | Roma |
| Fairs Cup, the UEFA Cup's predecessor | 1955-58 | Inter-Cities Fairs Cup | Barcelona |
Squad lists, suspensions and substitutions: the same across all three, mostly
A club changing competitions from one season to the next does not have to learn a new set of rules. UEFA uses a common structure for registration, discipline and match operation, and the differences are smaller than most people assume.
Squad registration works on two lists in each competition. List A holds up to 25 players, with places reserved for locally trained players, of whom a set number must be trained by the club itself. List B is for younger players who have been at the club for a qualifying period and can be added without limit and without taking a List A place. Clubs submit their lists before the league phase and can make a limited number of changes before the knockout rounds. The detail, including the age cut-off and how a player qualifies as club-trained, is in our guide to Champions League squad registration rules, and the Europa League and Conference League regulations follow the same model.
Discipline and match operation
Suspensions follow the same pattern too. A sending-off brings an automatic ban for at least the next UEFA match, and accumulated yellow cards bring a one-match ban at set thresholds, with the slate wiped clean before the semi-finals so that nobody misses a final for an innocuous caution picked up in the autumn. Yellow cards collected in one UEFA competition are not added to a count in another.
Substitutions follow the Laws of the Game as UEFA applies them: five substitutes in three stoppages plus half-time, and an additional substitution if a knockout match goes to extra time.
Where the three differ is in the operations of the competition itself. The number of matches differs, as set out above. The Conference League's smaller stadiums and lower budgets have meant that UEFA applies some infrastructure requirements in a more limited way to the lower competitions, and video assistant referees reached the lower two later than the Champions League. A Premier League club notices those differences only when it travels to smaller grounds.
What each competition is worth to a Premier League club
The Champions League is worth the most to any club, but not for one reason alone. It brings the largest UEFA payment, the strongest commercial pull and the highest standing with players. Clubs recruiting top players compete for them partly on the promise of Champions League football, and a player who could choose between two equivalent contracts will very often take the one with Tuesday and Wednesday nights attached.
The Europa League's value is mostly what it leads to. Its prize money is modest by Premier League standards, though welcome. Its larger worth is the route back into the Champions League, the coefficient points for England and, for a club without a recent trophy, a trophy. For a club that has been out of Europe for some time, it also brings back the experience of European travel and a different kind of evening at the home ground.
The Conference League is the hardest to value. For a Premier League club it is a trophy that a strong squad should win, and a route into the Europa League. It also means six Thursday matches before Christmas plus at least one summer play-off, for less money than the effort involves.
The argument over league points
The standing complaint against the lower competitions is that they cost a Premier League club league points. The argument runs that Thursday matches, long journeys and Sunday kick-offs drain a squad and pull a manager's attention away from the league, which pays more.
The evidence is weaker than the argument. Some clubs have clearly struggled. Burnley played Europa League qualifying in July and August 2018 and started their Premier League season poorly. Others have done well in both. The honest answer is that squad depth decides most of it. A club with two strong players in most positions can rotate through the Thursday matches and play its best side on Sunday. A club with a thin squad cannot, and the effect builds through the winter.
The judgement worth stating is this. For a club with Champions League ambitions and a thin squad, the Europa League can be a distraction until the knockout rounds. For a club whose league finish will not reach the top four, it is often the best route to the Champions League available.
English clubs' record in each of the three, and the clubs with more than one
English clubs have won the European Cup and Champions League more times than any country except Spain, and have a long record in the second competition too. At the end of the 2024-25 season, the totals stood as follows. They move with each final, so check the later seasons before quoting them.
In the top competition, Liverpool have six titles, Manchester United three, Chelsea and Nottingham Forest two each, and Aston Villa and Manchester City one each. In the UEFA Cup and Europa League, Liverpool and Tottenham have three each, Chelsea two, and Ipswich Town and Manchester United one each. In the Conference League, West Ham United won in 2023 and Chelsea in 2025. A complete list of the second competition's English winners, final by final, is in our guide to English Europa League winners.
The clubs that have won more than one
Chelsea are the only club anywhere to have won all three of the current UEFA club competitions: the Champions League in 2012 and 2021, the Europa League in 2013 and 2019, and the Conference League in 2025. They also won the old Cup Winners' Cup twice.
Liverpool have won both the European Cup and the UEFA Cup, and in the 1970s and early 1980s won the two in quick succession. Manchester United have won the Champions League three times and the Europa League once, in 2017. Tottenham's three UEFA Cup and Europa League titles came in 1972, 1984 and 2025, but they have never won the top competition.
| English club | European Cup / Champions League | UEFA Cup / Europa League | Conference League |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chelsea | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| Liverpool | 6 | 3 | 0 |
| Manchester United | 3 | 1 | 0 |
| Tottenham Hotspur | 0 | 3 | 0 |
| West Ham United | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Ipswich Town | 0 | 1 | 0 |
The qualifying rounds: the one route down that remains
Most English clubs never see European qualifying. The Premier League's allocation puts its Champions League and Europa League clubs straight into the league phase, and only the Carabao Cup winner, or a club that has inherited that place, starts in August with a play-off.
Elsewhere in Europe, qualifying is the main event of the summer. The Champions League runs two paths. The champions path is for title winners from associations whose champions do not qualify automatically. The league path is for clubs that finished just below the automatic places in stronger associations. Each path has several rounds through July and August, ending with a play-off.
Where the losers land
This is the one place in the modern system where a club drops from one competition to another, and it is deliberate. Every club that loses in Champions League qualifying is guaranteed somewhere to go. Losers in the final rounds go into the Europa League league phase. Losers in earlier rounds go into Europa League qualifying or, from the first round, straight into Conference League qualifying, and a club that loses again may finish in the Conference League. The same cascade runs from Europa League qualifying into the Conference League.
UEFA designed it that way for two reasons. Champions of smaller associations need guaranteed European football to make the summer qualifying worthwhile, and the lower competitions need those clubs to make a 36-club league phase work. A Scottish or Danish champion that loses a Champions League play-off in late August is likely to become one of the stronger clubs in the Europa League.
English clubs have been caught by it before. Everton finished fourth in 2004-05, lost to Villarreal in the final Champions League qualifying round that summer and went into the UEFA Cup, where they were knocked out in the first round. The access list has since changed and the Premier League's top four go directly to the league phase, so that particular trap no longer exists for English clubs. The mechanism still does, and it is the one point in the modern structure where a club can begin a season in one competition and end up playing its autumn in another.
For a broader look at how the English game connects to all of this, from the domestic cups to the summer tours, the football section and the England hub collect the rest of our coverage.