The league phase in European competitions

For many years, European club competitions followed a fairly simple format. Teams would first battle through a qualifying phase, and the best of them would then move on to a group stage. In the Champions League, Europa League, and later the Conference League, clubs were split into groups where they faced the same set of opponents.

Starting with the 2024/25 season, that system was replaced by the league phase. The change affected all three of UEFA's major club competitions: instead of groups of four teams, there's now one large table in which every team in the main phase of the competition is ranked.

The new format changed more than just the number of participating clubs — it also reshaped how teams qualify for the knockout rounds, how many matches they play, and how opponents are chosen. The main goals were to increase the number of appealing fixtures and give fans a wider variety of matchups.

How did the old group stage work?

Before the reform, the Champions League's main phase consisted of 32 teams split into eight groups of four. Each team played six matches — two against each of its three opponents, one at home and one away. The top two teams in each group advanced to the knockout stage, while the third-placed team could sometimes drop down into the Europa League, depending on the format in place at the time.

The group system had one clear advantage: it was easy to follow. Every club knew its opponents before a ball was even kicked, and knew exactly how many times it would face each one.

But it also had a real downside. The draw could easily produce a "group of death" packed with several elite sides, while another group ended up much weaker. As a result, the road to qualification wasn't always equally difficult for everyone involved.

Where did the reform come from? The shadow of the Super League

This change didn't come out of nowhere — it was part of much bigger shifts happening across European club football. A key driver was mounting pressure from the continent's biggest clubs, which had long been pushing for a bigger share of European revenue and more matches against the game's most recognizable teams.

In 2021, a group of clubs attempted to launch the European Super League, a breakaway competition sitting outside UEFA's traditional structure and built around Europe's biggest names. The project caused enormous controversy and collapsed almost immediately, but the underlying dispute over the future of European football didn't go away. The top clubs still wanted more say over how money and formats were decided, and UEFA had to respond somehow to fans' growing appetite for games between the sport's biggest stars. The reform of the Champions League and the other European competitions was one result of that standoff.

What does the new format actually look like?

Starting in 2024/25, UEFA rolled out a new format across all three major club competitions: the Champions League, Europa League, and Conference League. The single biggest change was ditching the traditional group stage in favor of the league phase.

In the Champions League, the number of teams in the main phase grew from 32 to 36, and the old split into eight groups disappeared entirely — every team now sits in one shared table. A similar setup was introduced in the Europa League and Conference League, so all three competitions now share a broadly similar structure.

36 teams, one table — but not everyone plays everyone

The defining feature of the new format is that all 36 teams are ranked in a single league table. That doesn't mean each team plays all 35 others, though — logistically, that would be impossible.

In the Champions League, every team plays eight matches in the league phase — four at home and four away. Opponents are determined by a draw that uses a system of seeding pots (based on club coefficient rankings) and rules designed to avoid pairing up clubs from the same country too often. In the Champions League and Europa League, each team draws two opponents from each of four pots; in the Conference League, it's one opponent from each of six pots. There's also a rule preventing a repeat fixture with the same host if the two sides already played each other at that venue within the past two years.

Once every match has been played, all 36 clubs are ranked in one combined table. That table is what replaced the old groups.

What do positions 1–8, 9–24, and 25–36 actually mean?

The new system creates several tiers of qualification:

• Positions 1–8 – automatic advancement to the round of 16, no play-off required.
• Positions 9–24 – a play-off round (round of 32) to decide the rest of the round-of-16 field. Teams finishing 9th–16th are seeded, while those in 17th–24th are unseeded. Winners of these two-legged ties join the top eight.
• Positions 25–36 – elimination from the competition. Unlike the old system, there's no automatic "parachute" into a lower European competition based on where you finished.

That means every single position in the table genuinely matters. There's an extra twist, too: the top two teams in the table are seeded so they can only meet each other in the final.

Why is the league phase more exciting for fans?

The biggest selling point of the new format is greater variety of opponents. Under the old group stage, a team played six matches but faced only three different opponents — twice each. In the league phase, those eight matches (six in the Conference League) come against eight completely different teams, which means matchups that might never have happened for years under the old system now actually take place.

That matters most in the Champions League, where clashes between Europe's biggest clubs are one of the competition's main draws.

There's a flip side, though: any single match now carries less weight than it did in a four-team group. In the past, one unexpected loss could effectively end a team's qualification hopes. Now, results are spread across eight different opponents, so one bad night stings a lot less.

Is the new format actually fairer?

There's also a fairness argument in favor of the league phase. In a four-team group, an enormous amount came down to the luck of the draw. Picture two teams of similar quality: one lands in a group with three genuine heavyweights, the other gets noticeably weaker opposition. Despite being comparable sides, their odds of advancing could end up wildly different.

In the league phase, a single draw matters much less, since every team faces more opponents and all 36 clubs are judged in one shared table. That doesn't mean the differences in difficulty disappear completely — you can still end up with an easier or harder run of fixtures — but the impact of that draw is now spread across far more matches. For a mid-table club, that translates into a genuinely better shot at picking up enough points to advance, even if it can't compete with Europe's elite.

Is this the "Swiss system"? Not quite

You'll often hear the reform described using the term Swiss system, but that label can be a bit misleading. UEFA's format isn't simply a straight application of the classic Swiss system best known from chess.

In the classic Swiss system, competitors don't play everyone else — after each round, pairings are made based on current results, matching players or teams with similar scores. In other words, who you play next depends on how you've done so far.

UEFA's league phase works differently. The full set of opponents is essentially locked in ahead of time through a pre-season draw, rather than being reshuffled round by round based on the current standings. So calling UEFA's format a "Swiss system" is something of a simplification. It's more accurate to say that UEFA's league phase borrows from the Swiss system in one specific sense: a large number of teams are ranked in a single table without needing to play every possible opponent. It's a format inspired by the Swiss system, but adapted to the realities of top-level club football.

How is this different from a normal league?

At first glance, the new format might look a lot like an ordinary football league, but there's a crucial difference. In a classic domestic league, every team plays every other team, typically home and away, following a fixed schedule. In the league phase of Europe's competitions, all the teams sit in one table, but each of them only plays a fraction of the possible matchups.

That's how UEFA managed to combine two things that used to be hard to reconcile: one big, unified ranking and a manageable number of matches. It's this structure that let UEFA expand the field without having to build an impossibly bloated calendar.

What has the reform changed for clubs and fans?

For clubs, it means more matches in the main phase of the competition and more chances at big, lucrative fixtures — but also a heavier schedule to manage. Teams in European competitions now have to juggle three fronts at once: domestic league football, European competition, and domestic cup football.

For fans, the biggest change is variety. Instead of six matches against the same three rivals, you get eight matchups against eight different clubs. On top of that, the table stays meaningful right down to the final matchday — the gap between a spot that guarantees direct advancement and one that means a trip through the play-offs can be enormous.

The bottom line

The league phase is one of the biggest changes in the modern history of European club competitions. In place of the old groups, UEFA built one shared table in which, in the Champions League, 36 teams compete — each playing eight matches against different opponents, with final position in the table determining what comes next.

The format's biggest strength is the sheer variety of matchups it produces. At the same time, more matches and one combined table reduce the impact of landing in a tough group — one of the old system's most persistent flaws.

Still, the league phase isn't a classic league, and it isn't a direct copy of the traditional Swiss system either. It's UEFA's own creation — one that borrows some ideas from the Swiss chess format and adapts them to the demands of top-tier club football. The result is a competition that can include more teams, deliver more compelling matches, and still keep its main phase relatively compact.