Champions League changes: What happens in 2024-25?

What does the new format look like?

A little more like a league than a cup, at least initially. The 36 qualifying teams will be divided in to four groups of nine within one big league table.

Those groups will be seeded. The winners of this season's competition and the teams with the eight best coefficient rankings (based on previous European performance) will be in Group 1, the teams with the next nine best coefficient rankings will form Group 2, and so on. The winners of the Europa League and domestic champions will not be favored in the draws.

Each club will then play eight games, four home and four away, against two teams from each group, including their own.

The top eight teams on the final table qualify directly for the round of 16, while those placed nine to 24 will play off for the other eight spots. Those placed 25-36 will be eliminated from European competition, with no drop down to the Europa League. For the moment, these changes only affect the men's competitions.

What are the major changes from the current Champions League?

Other than the controversial format itself, more teams will be involved, 36 from 32, and there will be more games, 189 from 125.

Two of the additional places will go to the top performing leagues in Europe the season before, which means two of the major leagues are likely to have five clubs in a campaign. Had the changes been made for this season, for example, Liverpool (Premier League) and Atalanta (Serie A) would have been the beneficiaries and England and Italy would have had five teams in the tournament.

The other two extra spots will go to the third-placed team in the league ranked fifth by UEFA (last year this would have been Marseille from France's Ligue 1) and the winners of the champions' path, which is how title winning teams outside of Europe's elite qualify for the group stage.

Why are these changes happening?

While UEFA have insisted that the new "Swiss Model" (based on a chess competition format in Switzerland) will "allow fans to see more top European matches" and "introduce a better competitive balance," the two clear incentives are inextricably linked: money and the threat of a Super League.

Firstly, more games means more money in UEFA's pockets, and the system means that heavyweight teams will meet in the early stages of the competition without their further participation being under serious threat. Even if a team ranked in the top eight of the coefficient were to stumble in the league stage, the gulf between the top and the bottom of European football leagues is such that the big clubs will almost certainly at least be in the mix for the playoffs, where they would likely be favorites to progress.

But the push to change the format of UEFA's premier club competition came after the threat from the European Super League, which initially proposed a model with some similarities but, crucially, without access to clubs outside of the chosen few. What remains of the Super League now has a new offering, but UEFA are pinning their hopes on the Champions League holding out.

What will the schedule look like?

The "league" phase of the rebooted competition will run from September to January on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. While the four groups of nine teams will be mostly based on coefficients, teams from the same national association will not be drawn together unless there are more than four teams from said domestic league in the competition.

Below is how the groups would look, had the changes been made ahead of the current season:

Group 1: Manchester City, Bayern Munich, Liverpool, Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain, Manchester United, Barcelona, Internazionale, Sevilla

Group 2: Borussia Dortmund, Atletico Madrid, RB Leipzig, Benfica, Napoli, Porto, Arsenal, Shakhtar Donetsk, Salzburg

Group 3: Atalanta, Feyenoord, AC Milan, Braga, PSV Eindhoven, Lazio, Red Star Belgrade, Copenhagen, BSC Young Boys

Group 4: Real Sociedad, Marseille, Galatasaray, Celtic, Molde, Newcastle United, Union Berlin, Antwerp, Lens

So Bayern Munich could have played Manchester City, PSG, Atletico Madrid, Napoli, Feyenoord, Young Boys, Celtic and Lens, with four of those games being at the Allianz Arena, and four on the road.

What about the other European competitions?

The new Europa League will look much the same as the new Champions League but the Conference League, while following the same format, will have six teams per group, as opposed to eight in the other competitions. These matches will continue, broadly, to be played on Thursdays.

Edited by: Jonathan Harding