2026–27 UEFA Women's Champions League
International football competition
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The 2026–27 UEFA Women's Champions League will be the 26th edition of the European women's club football championship organised by UEFA, and the 18th edition since being rebranded as the UEFA Women's Champions League. It is scheduled to start on 22 July 2026 and will end with the final on 28, 29, or 30 May 2027. This is the second season under a new format, which has 18 participating teams, playing six games each against different opponents in a league phase, all in a joint group.
22 July – 2 September 2026
Competition proper:
22 September 2026 – 28/29/30 May 2027
Total: 74 (from 50 associations)
The Stadion Narodowy in Warsaw will host the final. | |
| Tournament details | |
|---|---|
| Dates | Qualifying rounds: 22 July – 2 September 2026 Competition proper: 22 September 2026 – 28/29/30 May 2027 |
| Teams | Competition proper: 18 Total: 74 (from 50 associations) |
← 2025–26 2027–28 → | |
The Stadion Narodowy in Warsaw will host the final. The winners will automatically qualify for the 2027–28 UEFA Women's Champions League league phase and the 2028 FIFA Women's Club World Cup. Video assistant referee (VAR) will be used from the league phase onwards.
Association team allocation
The association ranking based on the UEFA women's country coefficients is used to determine the number of participating teams for each association:[1]
- Associations 1–7 each have three teams qualify.
- Associations 8–17 each have two teams qualify.
- All other associations, if they entered, each have one team qualify.
- The winners of the 2025–26 UEFA Women's Champions League and the 2025–26 UEFA Women's Europa Cup are each given an additional entry if they do not qualify for the 2026–27 UEFA Women's Champions League through their domestic leagues.
An association must have an eleven-a-side women's domestic league to enter a team. As of 2019–20, 52 of the 55 UEFA member associations organize a women's domestic league, with the exceptions being Andorra (1 club in Spain), Liechtenstein (3 clubs in Switzerland) and San Marino (1 club in Italy).
Association ranking
For the 2026–27 UEFA Women's Champions League, the associations are allocated places according to their 2025 UEFA women's Association coefficients, which takes into account their performance in European competitions from 2020–21 to 2024–25.[2]
Apart from the allocation based on the association coefficients, associations may have additional teams participating in the Champions League, as noted below:
- (TH) – Additional berth for UEFA Women's Champions League title holders
- (EC) – Additional berth for UEFA Women's Europa Cup title holders
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Distribution
| Teams entering in this round | Teams advancing from the previous round | ||
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| First qualifying round | Champions Path (19 teams) |
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| Second qualifying round | Champions Path (28 teams) |
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| League Path (16 teams) |
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| Third qualifying round | Champions Path (8 teams) |
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| League Path (10 teams) |
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| League phase (18 teams) |
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| Knockout phase play-offs (8 teams) |
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| Quarter-finals (8 teams) |
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As the Champions League title holders (Barcelona) qualified for the league phase and the Europa Cup title holders (BK Häcken) qualified for the second qualifying round (Champions Path) via their domestic leagues' standard berth allocations, the following changes to the default access list have been made:[4]
- BK Häcken, as Europa Cup title holders that would otherwise have entered the third qualifying round (Champions Path), will enter the league phase.
- Sparta Prague, as the club with the highest club coefficient that would otherwise have entered the second qualifying round (Champions Path), will enter the third qualifying round (Champions Path).
- Ferencváros, Gintra and Racing Union, as the three clubs with the highest club coefficients that would otherwise have entered the first qualifying round (Champions Path), will enter the second qualifying round (Champions Path).
Teams
The label in parentheses shows the route by which the club appears in that entry-round cell.
Superscript labels show additional access-list information held by that club but not used as the primary route for that cell.
- TH: Women's Champions League title holders
- EC: Women's Europa Cup title holders
- 1st, 2nd, 3rd: League positions of the previous season
Second and third qualifying rounds are divided into Champions Path (CH) and League Path (LP).
Notes
- ^ BK Häcken (BKH): BK Häcken entered the league phase as UEFA Women's Europa Cup title holders. They had also qualified for the second qualifying round (Champions Path) as Swedish champions; that domestic berth was rebalanced.
- ^
- ^
- ^ Serbia (SRB): Red Star Belgrade finished first and champions of the 2025–26 Serbian Women's Super League and qualified for the second qualifying round (Champions Path) but failed to obtain a UEFA licence. As a result, their place in the competition was passed on to the second-placed team, TSC Bačka Topola, and the place that was entitled to TSC Bačka Topola in the first qualifying round of the 2026–27 UEFA Women's Europa Cup was passed on to the third-placed team, Spartak Subotica.[9][10]
Schedule
The schedule of the competition is as follows.[11][12]
| Phase | Round | Draw date | First leg | Second leg |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qualifying rounds | First qualifying round | 18 June 2026 | 22 July 2026 (semi-finals) | 25 July 2026 (third-place play-off & final) |
| Second qualifying round | 5 August 2026 (semi-finals) | 8 August 2026 (third-place play-off & final) | ||
| Third qualifying round | 11 August 2026 | 26 August 2026 | 2 September 2026 | |
| League phase | Matchday 1 | 4 September 2026 | 22–23 September 2026 | |
| Matchday 2 | 30 September–1 October 2026 | |||
| Matchday 3 | 28–29 October 2026 | |||
| Matchday 4 | 10–11 November 2026 | |||
| Matchday 5 | 18–19 November 2026 | |||
| Matchday 6 | 16 December 2026 | |||
| Knockout phase | Knockout phase play-offs | 18 December 2026 | 3–4 February 2027 | 10–11 February 2027 |
| Quarter-finals | 23–24 March 2027 | 31 March–1 April 2027 | ||
| Semi-finals | N/a | 1–2 May 2027 | 8–9 May 2027 | |
| Final | 28, 29, or 30 May 2027 at Stadion Narodowy, Warsaw | |||
Qualifying rounds
First qualifying round
Champions Path
Hosted by PAOK.
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Hosted by Mitrovica.
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Hosted by TBA.
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Hosted by Czarni Sosnowiec.
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- Mini-tournament 5
Hosted by Spartak Myjava.
| Semi-finals | Final | |||||
| 25 July | ||||||
| 22 July | ||||||
Second qualifying round
Champions Path
Hosted by Mura.
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Hosted by Ferencváros.
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Hosted by TBA.
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Hosted by Racing Union.
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Hosted by OH Leuven.
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Hosted by Apollon Ladies.
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- Mini-tournament 7
Hosted by HB Køge.
| Semi-finals | Final | |||||
| 5 August | ||||||
| 8 August | ||||||
| 5 August | ||||||
| Third place | ||||||
| 8 August | ||||||
League Path
Hosted by TBA.
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Hosted by TBA.
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Hosted by TBA.
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Third qualifying round
League phase
The league phase draw for the 2026–27 UEFA Women's Champions League is scheduled to take place on 4 September 2026. The 18 teams will be divided into three pots of six teams. Each team will face two opponents from each of the three pots, one at home and one away.
As of 16 May 2026, 9 out of 18 teams have qualified for the league phase:
The following is a provisional allocation of the qualified teams into seeding pots, based on their UEFA club coefficients.
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Pot 1
Pot 1/2 |
Pot 2
Pot 2/3
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