Inside the Champions League's 36-team league phase after one season

The UEFA Executive Committee approved the new Champions League format in Vienna on May 10, 2022, and the first season under it ran from September 2024 to a final in Munich on May 31, 2025. The group stage that had organised the competition for decades was replaced by a single 36-team table in which every club plays eight different opponents, and the knockout bracket that followed was seeded by that table.

A format change of this size invites two questions: how does it work, from the draw to the tiebreakers and the money, and did the first season produce what UEFA said it would? The answers below come from UEFA's regulations, its distribution circular and its own reporting on the season.

How 36 clubs qualified

The 2022 decision added four places to the old 32. One goes to the third-placed club of the association ranked fifth in UEFA's national rankings, and the Champions Path of qualifying grew from four entrants to five. The other two, the European Performance Spots, go to the two associations whose clubs earned the most coefficient points per club in the previous season, each taking its best-placed domestic finisher outside the automatic places. UEFA president Aleksander Čeferin said at the time that "qualification will thus remain purely based on sporting performance."

In 2024/25 the European Performance Spots went to Bologna and Dortmund, according to UEFA's season guide, which also records that 25 clubs qualified directly from domestic leagues and seven came through qualifying: Crvena Zvezda, Dinamo Zagreb, Lille, Salzburg, Slovan Bratislava, Sparta Praha and Young Boys.

The draw: four pots, two opponents from each

The draw for the first season took place at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco on August 29, 2024, and UEFA's draw explainer sets out the mechanics. The 36 clubs are seeded into four pots of nine by club coefficient, with the titleholder, Real Madrid in 2024, as the top seed in Pot 1. Each club is drawn two opponents from every pot, including its own, and plays one of each pair at home and one away, which produces four home and four away matches against eight different clubs.

In principle clubs from the same association cannot be drawn together, and a club can face at most two opponents from any other single association. A ball is drawn by hand to select a club, then software assigns its opponents and venues under the eye of an external auditor. The software evaluates all remaining options at each step so the draw cannot reach a dead end.

Pot 1 in 2024 ran from Real Madrid to Barcelona; Pot 4 included Aston Villa, Bologna, Girona, Stuttgart and Brest. Because every club's eight opponents come from the same strength distribution, results can be compared across clubs in a way the old groups never allowed.

Tiebreakers and the Matchday 8 scramble

With 36 clubs on one table, ties on points are common, and UEFA's standings guide lists ten criteria in order: goal difference, goals scored, away goals scored, wins, away wins, the collective points of a club's opponents, the collective goal difference of those opponents, the collective goals of those opponents, disciplinary points (three for a red card, one for a yellow, three for a dismissal from two yellows in one match) and finally club coefficient. During Matchdays 1 to 7 only the first five apply, and clubs still level are listed alphabetically.

The final matchday was designed to be chaotic, and it was. All 18 games on January 29, 2025 kicked off simultaneously, and UEFA's own review counted 64 goals that night, 3.55 per game, with 35 of the 36 clubs changing position at least once during the evening. Dortmund, top after Matchday 2, went into the last round 14th and finished tenth. Manchester City trailed Club Brugge at half-time before scoring three to reach the play-offs, and Dinamo Zagreb beat AC Milan 2-1 yet still went out because Conrad Harder's late goal earned Sporting a draw against Bologna.

Those positions decide the bracket. First to eighth go directly to the round of 16 as seeds; ninth to 24th enter a two-legged play-off in which ninth to 16th are seeded; 25th and below are out of Europe. Seeded clubs play the second leg at home.

What the first table showed

Liverpool finished first with seven wins and one defeat, 21 points, according to UEFA's knockout-phase guide. Barcelona, Arsenal and Inter each finished 6-1-1 on 19 points, Atlético Madrid 6-0-2 on 18, and Leverkusen, Lille and Aston Villa 5-1-2 on 16 to take the last three direct places. Real Madrid finished 11th, Bayern 12th and Paris Saint-Germain 15th with four wins, a draw and three defeats. UEFA's own pre-season guidance had put the likely threshold for the top 24 at around 7.6 points; in practice Club Brugge took 24th place with 11.

The seeding that was supposed to protect the elite did not. Only three of the nine Pot 1 clubs, Liverpool, Barcelona and Inter, finished in the top eight. Lille from Pot 3 and Villa from Pot 4 qualified directly, with Villa beating Bayern along the way. UEFA's review put the league phase average at 3.26 goals per game, the highest for any Champions League group campaign, and reported that Pot 4 clubs averaged about one point per game against 0.7 in the 2021 to 2024 group stages. The largest gap in average opponent coefficient between any two clubs was 19 points; in 2022/23, Viktoria Plzeň's schedule had been 53.5 points harder than Chelsea's.

Arsenal's Declan Rice put it from a player's perspective: "We are coming up against probably tougher teams than you normally would in a group stage format." The eventual winner proved the point the other way. Paris, 15th in the table, beat Brest 10-0 on aggregate in the play-offs, then Liverpool on penalties, Villa 5-4 and Arsenal 3-1 before beating Inter 5-0 in Munich.

Where the money goes

UEFA's distribution summary for 2024 to 2027 starts from a projected €4.4 billion gross across the three competitions and the Super Cup, of which €3.317 billion goes to participating clubs and €2.467 billion, or 74.38 percent, to the Champions League. That pool is split into three pillars: 27.5 percent in equal shares, 37.5 percent for performance and 35 percent in a new value pillar that merged the old market pool and coefficient payments.

The amounts per club come by circular letter, and the circular of June 16, 2025, which states that it follows what was applied in 2024/25, gives the figures. Each of the 36 league-phase clubs receives a starting fee of €18.62 million. Each win pays €2.1 million and each draw €700,000. A separate ranking bonus divides its pot into 666 shares worth €275,000 each, one share for 36th place rising to 36 shares for first, plus €2 million extra for places one to eight and €1 million for nine to 16. Reaching the play-offs is worth €1 million, the round of 16 €11 million, the quarter-finals €12.5 million, the semi-finals €15 million, the final €18.5 million, and the winner an additional €6.5 million.

Applied to the first season's table, Liverpool's seven wins earned €14.7 million in match bonuses and its 36 ranking shares €9.9 million before the €2 million top-eight supplement, while a club finishing 36th collected the starting fee, one share and whatever it won on the pitch. The value pillar, €853 million in the Champions League, is distributed through its own 666-share rankings based on broadcast market value and coefficients. The sums involved help explain why club ownership structures matter in this competition, a theme covered in how multi-club ownership reshaped the loan market.

The practical way to read a league-phase table is to count wins before points. Two draws are worth less than one win in the standings, and in the distribution model a draw pays exactly a third of a win, since the match fees are paid regardless of opponent. Then look at the eighth and 24th lines, because the gap between a direct round-of-16 place and a play-off is two extra matches, €10 million in guaranteed fees, and the right to play the second leg at home.

Whether the first season's upsets were the format or an unusual year will take more seasons to settle, but the rules now reward every place on the table, and the clubs have noticed.