Tonight, March 4, UEFA’s homepage X (formerly Twitter) posted a detailed video describing the new format that the European Football Federation will apply to the tournaments they organize in the coming months. new season 2024/25, with Champions League, Europa League and Conference League.

UEFA emphasized that the classification for the three competitions continues to maintain the same principle: sporting performance. That is, the final positions in the rankings of each domestic championship will allocate places for the next tournament starting in mid-2024. Next, UEFA confirmed that this format has a mini-tournament lasting 8 rounds, including 36 teams instead of 32 teams in the current group stage of 6 rounds.

According to this model, in the first round, the first team meets the 36th team, the second team meets the 35th team. From 25th to 36th place, they are automatically eliminated from the tournament and do not have a second chance in the tournament. match with the lowest ranking, as happened with 3rd place in traditional format groups. In the second round, the first round winners will meet, the tied teams will meet and the losing teams will meet. Teams with higher scores later on will be more likely to clash, creating more great battles.

After 10 rounds, the strongest team will go straight to the 1/8 round. The next 16 teams will compete in a play-off to select the remaining eight teams in the 1/8 round. Teams from 17th to 24th will drop to the Europa League, while the bottom 12 teams will be eliminated.

Group stage matches in the Champions League and Europa League take place from September to January, while matches in the Europa Conference League take place from September to December. Each of the three club competitions UEFA will have an exclusive competition week, as the other two competitions are not scheduled during that week.