The 2022–23 UEFA Champions League is the 68th season of Europe's premier club

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

tournament organised by

UEFA Union of European Football Associations (UEFA ; french: Union des associations européennes de football; german: Union der europäischen Fußballverbände) is one of six continental bodies of governance in association football. It governs f ...

, and the 31st season since it was renamed from the

European Champion Clubs' Cup The European Champion Clubs' Cup, also known as Coupe des Clubs Champions Européens, or simply the European Cup, is a trophy awarded annually by UEFA to the football club that wins the UEFA Champions League. The competition in its older format ...

to the

UEFA Champions League The UEFA Champions League (abbreviated as UCL, or sometimes, UEFA CL) is an annual club football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and contested by top-division European clubs, deciding the competit ...

. The

final Final, Finals or The Final may refer to: *Final (competition), the last or championship round of a sporting competition, match, game, or other contest which decides a winner for an event ** Another term for playoffs, describing a sequence of cont ...

will be played at the

Atatürk Olympic Stadium The Atatürk Olympic Stadium ( tr, Atatürk Olimpiyat Stadyumu, ) is a stadium in Istanbul, Turkey. Located in the western district of İkitelli, it is the largest-capacity stadium in the country. The stadium is named after Mustafa Kemal Atat ...

Istanbul Istanbul ( , ; tr, İstanbul ), formerly known as Constantinople ( grc-gre, Κωνσταντινούπολις; la, Constantinopolis), is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, serving as the country's economic, ...

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

. The stadium was originally appointed to host the 2020 UEFA Champions League Final, but both this and the 2021 final, which had been subsequently re-allocated to the Atatürk, were moved due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

. The winner of the 2022–23 UEFA Champions League will automatically qualify for the 2023–24 UEFA Champions League group stage, and also earn the right to play against the winner of the

2022–23 UEFA Europa League The 2022–23 UEFA Europa League is the 52nd season of Europe's secondary club football tournament organised by UEFA, and the 14th season since it was renamed from the UEFA Cup to the UEFA Europa League. The final will be played at the Puská ...

in the 2023 UEFA Super Cup.

Real Madrid Real Madrid Club de Fútbol (, meaning ''Royal Madrid Football Club''), commonly referred to as Real Madrid, is a Spanish professional football club based in Madrid. Founded in 1902 as Madrid Football Club, the club has traditionally wor ...

are the defending champions, having won a record-extending fourteenth title in the previous edition.

Association team allocation

A total of 78 teams from 53 of the 55

member associations participate in the 2022–23 UEFA Champions League (the exceptions being Russia, who are banned from participating due to

2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which began in 2014. The invasion has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths on both sides. It has caused Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. An ...

, and

Liechtenstein Liechtenstein (), officially the Principality of Liechtenstein (german: link=no, Fürstentum Liechtenstein), is a German-speaking microstate located in the Alps between Austria and Switzerland. Liechtenstein is a semi-constitutional monarchy ...

, which does not organise a domestic league). The association ranking based on the UEFA association coefficients is used to determine the number of participating teams for each association: *Associations 1–4 each have four teams qualify. *Associations 5–6 each have three teams qualify. *Associations 7–15 (except

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

) each have two teams qualify. *Associations 16–55 (except

) each have one team qualify. *The winners of the 2021–22 UEFA Champions League and 2021–22 UEFA Europa League are each given an additional entry if they do not qualify for the 2022–23 UEFA Champions League through their domestic league.

Association ranking

For the 2022–23 UEFA Champions League, the associations are allocated places according to their 2021 UEFA association coefficients, which takes into account their performance in European competitions from 2016–17 to 2020–21. Apart from the allocation based on the association coefficients, associations may have additional teams participating in the Champions League, as noted below: * – Additional berth for UEFA Europa League title holders

Distribution

The following is the access list for this season. Due to the suspension of Russia for the 2022–23 European season, and since the Champions League title holders (

) have qualified via their domestic league, the following changes to the access list have been made: *The champions of association 11 (Scotland) and 12 (Ukraine) enter the group stage instead of the play-off round (Champions Path). *The champions of association 13 (Turkey) and 14 (Denmark) enter the play-off round instead of the third qualifying round (Champions Path). *The champions of association 15 (Cyprus) and 16 (Serbia) enter the third qualifying round instead of the second qualifying round (Champions Path). *The champions of associations 18 (Croatia), 19 (Switzerland), 20 (Greece) and 21 (Israel) enter the second qualifying round instead of the first qualifying round (Champions Path). *The runners-up of associations 10 (Austria) and 11 (Scotland) enter the third qualifying round instead of the second qualifying round (League Path).

Teams

The labels in the parentheses show how each team qualified for the place of its starting round: *TH: Champions League title holders *EL: Europa League title holders *1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc.: League positions of the previous season *Abd-: League positions of abandoned season as determined by the national association; all teams are subject to approval by UEFA The second qualifying round, third qualifying round and play-off round are divided into Champions Path (CH) and League Path (LP). ''CC: 2022 UEFA club coefficients.'' Notes

Schedule

The schedule of the competition is as follows. All matches are played on Tuesdays and Wednesdays apart from the preliminary round final and the final. Scheduled kick-off times starting from the play-off round are 18:45 and 21:00 CEST/CET. As the

2022 FIFA World Cup The 2022 FIFA World Cup is an international association football, football tournament contested by the men's national teams of FIFA's member associations. The 22nd FIFA World Cup is taking place in Qatar from 20 November to 18 December 2022 ...

takes place in Qatar between 20 November and 18 December 2022, the group stage commenced in the first week of September 2022 and concluded in the first week of November 2022 to make way for the World Cup. The draws for the qualifying round started at 12:00 CEST/CET and were held at the UEFA headquarters in

Nyon Nyon (; outdated German language, German: or ; outdated Italian language, Italian: , ) is a Municipalities of Switzerland, municipality in Nyon District in the Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Vaud in Switzerland. It is located some 25 kilomet ...

, Switzerland. The group stage draw took place in

, Turkey.

Qualifying rounds

Preliminary round

First qualifying round

Second qualifying round

Third qualifying round

Play-off round

Group stage

The draw for the group stage was held on 25 August 2022. The 32 teams were drawn into eight groups of four. For the draw, the teams were seeded into four pots, each of eight teams, based on the following principles: *Pot 1 contained the Champions League and Europa League title holders, and the champions of the top six associations based on their 2021 UEFA country coefficients. Since the Champions League title holders,

, were also the champions of Association 2 (Spain), the champions of Association 7 (Netherlands),

Ajax Ajax may refer to: Greek mythology and tragedy * Ajax the Great, a Greek mythological hero, son of King Telamon and Periboea * Ajax the Lesser, a Greek mythological hero, son of Oileus, the king of Locris * ''Ajax'' (play), by the ancient Greek ...

, were seeded into Pot 1. *Pots 2, 3 and 4 contained the remaining teams, seeded based on their 2022 UEFA club coefficients (CC). Teams from the same association could not be drawn into the same group.

Eintracht Frankfurt Eintracht Frankfurt e.V. () is a professional sports club based in Frankfurt, Hesse, Germany. It is best known for its football club, which was founded on 8 March 1899. The team is currently playing in the Bundesliga, the top tier of the Germa ...

made their debut appearance in the group stage (and first appearance in the European Cup since their loss in the 1960 final) after winning the 2021–22 UEFA Europa League and, as a result, this was the first time that five German clubs played in the group stage. A total of 15 national associations were represented in the group stage. This season was the first since the 1995–96 edition in which a Turkish side failed to qualify for the group stage. It was also the first time since the 2007–08 season that two Scottish sides qualified for the group stage.

Group A

Group B

Group C

Group D

Group E

Group F

Group G

Group H

Knockout phase

In the

knockout phase A single-elimination, knockout, or sudden death tournament is a type of elimination tournament where the loser of each match-up is immediately eliminated from the tournament. Each winner will play another in the next round, until the final matc ...

, teams play against each other over two legs on a home-and-away basis, except for the one-match final.

Bracket

Round of 16

Quarter-finals

Semi-finals

Final

Statistics

Statistics exclude qualifying rounds and play-off round. ''Tables updated as of 2 November 2022.''

Top goalscorers

Top assists

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Uefa Champions League 2022-23 2022–23 UEFA Champions League 1

2022–23 The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...

Current association football seasons Sports events affected by the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine