How the Conference League changed the UEFA ranking and European hierarchy

The UEFA Conference League was launched in the 2021/22 season as UEFA's third, lowest-ranked club competition. At first it might have looked like just another European cup, one mainly for clubs from smaller countries. From a few years' distance, though, its significance turns out to be much bigger – it hasn't just changed the number of teams taking part in European competitions, but above all it lowered the entry threshold to UEFA's league phase and gave clubs from many countries a real chance at regular international competition.

Why was the Conference League created?

For many years, European club competitions were heavily concentrated around the strongest leagues. The Champions League was primarily the domain of the biggest clubs, and the Europa League was also gradually becoming harder to reach for teams from lower-ranked associations. The problem hit clubs from countries further down the UEFA ranking especially hard – a national champion or cup winner might enter European qualifying, but the road to the group stage often ended in one of the earlier qualifying rounds.

As a result, there was a clear divide between countries whose clubs regularly appeared in group stages and those that took part in qualifying but rarely reached the main part of the competition. The Conference League was meant to shift that divide – its creation meant an additional path to UEFA's league phase opened up for many European clubs. Instead of ending their European journey after a failed Champions League or Europa League qualifying campaign, some teams could now continue competing in the third competition. It's no accident that UEFA presented the new tournament as a way of giving more clubs the chance to take part in European competition.

"Europa League 2" – a working name that captured the idea well

Before the new competition launched, it was often informally called "Europa League 2." That was obviously never the official name, but it captured the new tournament's basic function well – creating a tier between the elite competitions and the clubs that had previously sat just below the European mainstream.

In practice, the Conference League filled in part of the gap between Europe's top leagues and the associations whose representatives regularly fell in Champions League and Europa League qualifying. This matters especially for countries lower down the UEFA ranking: for a club from one of the top five leagues, reaching a European cup's league phase is a fairly routine event, but for a team from a smaller association it can be the biggest international achievement in its history. The Conference League gave such clubs an extra goal to aim for.

From over a dozen countries without a league phase to just two

The scale of this change is best illustrated by the number of associations whose clubs have appeared in the main phase of European competitions. As recently as the 2024/25 season, only four UEFA associations (Andorra, Malta, San Marino, and Montenegro) had never had a club reach the league phase of any European cup. In the 2025/26 season, thanks to Maltese side Hamrun Spartans reaching it, the list shrank to three countries, and by summer 2026, after Andorran champions Inter Escaldes reached the Conference League's league phase, only two associations remained that have never had a club reach the group or league phase of UEFA's men's club competitions: Montenegro and San Marino.

This is one of the clearest pieces of evidence for how the Conference League has widened access to European competitions. That doesn't mean, of course, that clubs from smaller countries have suddenly started regularly playing the continent's best teams – the gap in sporting level between different associations is still enormous. What's changed is the very possibility of reaching the league phase. For a small country, qualifying for the Conference League can mean far more than the competition's name might suggest: the club gets six league-phase matches, international experience, revenue from UEFA, and the chance to earn points for both its club and national coefficients. And it's precisely the points earned by all the clubs from a given association that later feed into the UEFA ranking and the number of spots that country gets in European competitions in future seasons.

Poland as one of the best examples

Poland is a very good example of how the Conference League can affect an entire country's standing in European football. Just a few years ago, Polish clubs struggled to reach the group stage of European competitions on a regular basis. That began to change with the arrival of the Conference League: in the 2022/23 season Lech Poznań reached the quarter-finals, two years later Legia Warszawa and Jagiellonia Białystok managed the same feat, and in the 2025/26 season Poland hit a new record – as many as four clubs took part in the Conference League's league phase: Lech Poznań, Jagiellonia Białystok, Legia Warszawa, and Raków Częstochowa. That was twice as many as the Czech Republic, Poland's rival for a place in the top ten of the UEFA ranking.

This wasn't a case of one club having a lucky run – this time, a large chunk of Poland's top clubs were earning European points simultaneously. That's one of the biggest advantages of UEFA's third competition from an association's point of view: even if a Polish club isn't strong enough to compete in the Champions League, it can find its level in the Europa League or the Conference League. As a result, more Polish clubs play in Europe in the autumn, and more matches mean more chances to earn points for the UEFA ranking.

The effect was clearly visible in Poland's position in the five-year national ranking that determines access to European competitions. Poland started the 2024/25 season in 21st place and, thanks to Legia's and Jagiellonia's Conference League quarter-finals, finished it in 15th. A year later, in the 2025/26 season – thanks to a record four clubs reaching the Conference League's league phase – Poland climbed even higher, to 12th place, trailing only the Czech Republic and Greece in the ranking. That's a historically high position, and from the 2026/27 season it gives Polish clubs five spots in European competitions: two in Champions League qualifying, one in the Europa League, and two in the Conference League.

That's not to say the whole climb can be credited to the Conference League alone – the coefficient is affected by the results of all Polish clubs in all UEFA competitions. Still, it's hard not to notice that the extra matches and the chance for more Polish teams to play in the autumn played a significant part in that process.

The Conference League gives clubs a safety net

The impact of the new competition is also visible in qualifying itself. A club's European journey no longer ends as easily after one failed two-legged tie – depending on which round a club starts in and which competition it's entered into, a loss can now mean dropping down to a lower UEFA competition rather than an immediate end to its European run.

The system for national champions is especially interesting. A champion starting Champions League qualifying from the second round now has a much better chance of guaranteeing itself autumn football in Europe than before the Conference League existed. Put simply: winning just one two-legged tie from the second round of Champions League qualifying is enough to guarantee the champion a spot in at least the league phase of one of the European competitions. If it later fails to break through into the Champions League or Europa League, it can still land in the Conference League. That's a huge change for smaller associations – a national champion no longer has to win several qualifying rounds in a row to still be playing in Europe come autumn. One two-legged win can be enough to lock in a league-phase spot. On top of that, champions only face each other in this path – they don't run into France's or the Netherlands' third or fourth-best team in qualifying.

It's not just the big clubs that benefit from European competitions existing

One of the most important consequences of the new competition is the increase in the number of clubs able to gain experience on the international stage. For a big club, the Conference League might be the least prestigious of the three European cups. For a club from San Marino, Iceland, Malta, Kosovo, Armenia, or another smaller country, it can be a historic achievement.

That's exactly why the Conference League's significance is best judged not by comparing its sporting level to the Champions League, but by how many clubs and how many countries gained the chance to compete regularly in Europe because of it. In the competition's early years, it featured teams that had previously very rarely had the chance to play in the main phase of European competitions. Over time, some of them started earning points, improving their associations' coefficients, and returning to European competition in subsequent seasons. A mechanism was created, then, that can keep working over the long term.

The Conference League has changed the European hierarchy

Of course, no one should expect the Conference League to completely level the playing field in European football. The richest leagues still hold an enormous financial advantage, and the best clubs remain clear favorites against teams from smaller countries. What has changed, though, is the lower boundary of European competition: before 2021, a club could be its country's champion, dominate its domestic league year after year, and still have virtually no chance of a longer run in European competitions. Today, the path is much wider.

The Conference League created a third tier of European competition, but its real function is broader – it filled in part of the gap between clubs from the strongest leagues and teams from countries that had previously sat just outside regular participation in group stages. Poland shows that a system like this can have consequences beyond individual clubs: more teams playing in Europe in the autumn means more matches, more experience, and more chances to earn points for the UEFA ranking. And the higher a country sits in that ranking, the better access its clubs get to European competitions in the seasons that follow.

That's why the Conference League isn't just "UEFA's third cup." From the perspective of smaller and mid-sized associations, it has become a mechanism for expanding European football to include more clubs and more countries.