European competitions: What will change in 2024/25

The Red Bulls have been playing in the Bundesliga since 2016. Since then we have been able to qualify for an European competition every season. 

UCL in the final season under its current guise

The current Champions League season will follow the familiar pattern for the final time: a group phase with eight groups of four teams. The two best teams in each group advance to the round of 16, the third-placed team advances to the UEFA Europa League and the fourth-placed team is eliminated from international competition.

But this season is the last in which the Champions League will operate in this form. For the 2024/25 season, UEFA has decided to modify their European Cup competitions.

We explain what is changing. 

The new Champions League

The Champions League will have a new format from next season. The most important points of the reform:

• In the fiture, 36, not 32, teams will take part.
   
• Of the four additional places, one goes to the fifth-place team in the five-year ranking (most recently France). In addition, another team qualifies from the qualification round.
   
• As explained above, the allocation of the two additional places is new: the two countries that collectively perform best in Europe within a season will receive an additional place in the Champions League in the following campaign. The Bundesliga is currently in second place, just ahead of England, and would therefore have an additional place in the upcoming UCL season. Italy is currently in first place.
   
• Instead of group matches, the competition is played in a league, with a large table of 36 teams.
   
• Each club plays against eight different teams and has four home and four away games.
   
• The top eight teams at the end of the league phase advance to the round of 16. The following 16 teams are in a knockout round for the remaining eight places in the round of 16, the rest are eliminated.
   
• In the round of 16, the clubs are placed according to their position in the tournament tree, which is similar to the procedure in tennis tournaments.
   
• Relegation to the Europa League is no longer possible. Direct qualification is the only route to that competition. 
   

Europa League und Conference League

From the 2024/25 season, the Europa League and the Conference League will be played in the same format as the Champions League. There will also be 36 participants and a league system instead of the group phase.

Another new feature is that there will no longer be any "switching" from one competition to another. Currently, for example, the third-placed team in the Champions League group stage plays in the knock-out phase of the Europa League. In future, all three competitions will run independently of one another.
 

A separate week for each competition | 2 more games per club

In future, there will be an exclusive week in the schedule for each competition, so that there will always be either Champions League, Europa League or Conference League matches, but there will never be matches from different competitions in the same week.

A total of four new European Cup weeks will therefore be added to the fixture calendar. For all teams playing in Europe, eight games are guaranteed in the future (previously six).