2025–26 UEFA Conference League

The 2025–26 UEFA Conference League will be the fifth season of the UEFA Conference League, Europe's tertiary club football tournament organised by UEFA.

This will be the second UEFA Conference League played under a new format involving a 36-team league phase. The new format also does not allow teams to transfer from the Europa League to the Conference League from the league phase onwards, and thus the Conference League titleholders ( Chelsea) are unable to defend their title as the winner of the Conference League automatically qualifies for the Europa League league phase. However, Chelsea had already qualified for the 2025–26 UEFA Champions League league phase via their domestic league position prior to winning the Conference League, so the automatic berth in the Europa League was not required and the access list was rebalanced.

The final will be played at the Red Bull Arena in Leipzig, Germany. The winners of the tournament will automatically qualify for the 2026–27 UEFA Europa League league phase, unless they qualify for the 2026–27 UEFA Champions League or Europa League through their league performance. In which case, the access list will be rebalanced.

Association team allocation

A total of 167 teams from 54 of the 55 UEFA member associations are participating in the 2025–26 UEFA Conference League. The association ranking based on the UEFA association coefficients was used to determine the number of participating teams for each association:
*Associations 1–12 each have one team.
*Associations 13–33 and 51–55 (except Russia) each have two teams.
*Associations 34–50 each have three teams (except Liechtenstein, which has one).
*15 teams eliminated from the 2025–26 UEFA Champions League and 41 teams eliminated from the 2025–26 UEFA Europa League will be transferred to the Conference League.

Association ranking

For the 2025–26 UEFA Conference League, the associations were allocated places according to their 2024 UEFA association coefficients, which took into account their performance in European competitions from 2019–20 to 2023–24.

Apart from the allocation based on the association coefficients, associations could have additional teams participating in the Conference League, as noted below:
* – Additional teams transferred from the UEFA Champions League
* – Additional/vacated teams transferred from/to the UEFA Europa League

Distribution

The following is the access list for this season.

The information here reflects the ongoing suspension of Russia in European football, and so the following changes to the default access list were made:

*The cup winners of associations 39 to 44 (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Liechtenstein, Iceland, Northern Ireland, Luxembourg and Lithuania) will enter the second qualifying round instead of the first qualifying round.
*As a result of corresponding changes to the Champions League access list, there will be one fewer loser from the Champions League first qualifying round transferred to the Conference League second qualifying round (Champions Path) so one transferred team will receive a bye to the third qualifying round (Champions Path).

As the Champions League title holders (Paris St Germain) qualified for the Champions League via their domestic league's standard berth allocation, the following changes to the default access list were made:

*As a result of corresponding changes to the Champions League access list, there will be one fewer loser from the Champions League first qualifying round (two fewer in total) transferred to the Conference League second qualifying round (Champions Path), so one transferred team (two in total) will receive a bye to the third qualifying round (Champions Path).

As the Conference League title holders ( Chelsea) qualified for the Champions League phase via their domestic league's standard berth allocation, the following changes to the default access list were made:

*The cup winners of association 34 (Finland) will enter the Europa League first qualifying round instead of the second qualifying round.
*The cup winners of associations 45 (Malta) and 46 (Georgia) will enter the second qualifying round instead of the first qualifying round.

Teams

The labels in the parentheses show how each team qualified for the place of its starting round:
*CW: Domestic cup winners
*2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, etc.: League position of the previous season
*LC: League cup winners
*RW: Regular season winners
*PW: End-of-season Conference League play-offs winners
*CL: Transferred from the Champions League
**Q1: Losers from the first qualifying round
*EL: Transferred from the Europa League
**PO: Losers from the play-off round
**CH/MP Q3: Losers from the third qualifying round (Champions/Main Path)
**MP Q2: Losers from the second qualifying round (Main Path)
**MP Q1: Losers from the first qualifying round (Main Path)

The second qualifying round, third qualifying round and play-off round were divided into Champions Path (CH) and Main Path (MP).

Two teams not playing in a national top division will take part in the competition: Vaduz ( 2nd tier) and Spaeri ( 2nd tier).

Notes

Round and draw dates

The schedule of the competition is as follows. Matches are scheduled for Thursdays, with an exclusive day of 18 December, apart from the final, which takes place on a Wednesday, though exceptionally can take place on Tuesdays or Wednesdays due to scheduling conflicts.

Qualifying rounds

First qualifying round

Second qualifying round

Third qualifying round

Play-off round

League phase

Table

Results

See also

*2025–26 UEFA Champions League
*2025–26 UEFA Europa League
* 2026 UEFA Super Cup
* 2025–26 UEFA Women's Champions League
* 2025–26 UEFA Women's Europa Cup
* 2025–26 UEFA Youth League

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:2025-26 UEFA Europa Conference League

UEFA Conference League seasons
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UEFA