Continental club football

Each of the six confederations runs its own club competitions for the strongest sides in its region. Clubs qualify for these competitions through their performance in their national leagues or cup competitions — typically the top finishers in the top-flight league, plus the domestic cup winners, plus an extra place or two from the lower league positions. Many continental club competitions are played across the domestic season, often in midweek windows or designated competition dates.

The exact format varies by confederation. Continental champions also feed into FIFA's global club competitions, but the Club World Cup and Intercontinental Cup now use different qualification routes.

Both forms rank the clubs and send the leading ones into the knockout stage; they differ only in how the clubs are arranged. The traditional group stage splits them into several small groups that play each other home and away, with the top finishers in each group going through — the Copa Libertadores, for example, uses eight groups of four and sends the top two from each into the knockout rounds. The newer league phase, adopted by UEFA across all three of its competitions, instead places every club in a single combined table.

In a league phase the clubs share one table but do not all play each other. Each club plays a fixed number of different opponents — eight matches in the Champions League and Europa League, six in the Conference League — and the final standings decide who goes through. The top eight advance straight to the round of 16, the next 16 enter a two-legged knockout play-off for the remaining places, and the bottom 12 are eliminated. A few competitions, such as the CONCACAF Champions Cup, skip the opening phase altogether and run as a straight knockout from the start.

Once the opening phase is over, most continental competitions play two-legged knockout ties, one match at each club's ground, with the winners decided on aggregate. The final is usually a single match at a neutral venue, although a few competitions still settle it over two legs.

In Europe, the UEFA Super Cup is an annual one-off match between the winners of the Champions League and the Europa League, played in August at a neutral venue. It marks the start of the European club season and serves as a curtain-raiser before the league phases begin. South America has a parallel competition called the Recopa Sudamericana, which is contested each year between the winners of the Copa Libertadores and the Copa Sudamericana.

Several confederations also run supporting competitions beneath, alongside or feeding into their main club tournament. Europe has the Europa League and Conference League, South America has the Copa Sudamericana, Africa has the CAF Confederation Cup, and Asia has the AFC Champions League Two. In CONCACAF and Oceania, the structure is different, with regional qualifying competitions and newer professional-league pathways playing a larger role.

Clubs reach continental competition through their national league or cup. The number of places each country receives is set by its confederation, often using rankings or coefficient systems based on how clubs from that country have performed in continental competition. Stronger leagues usually get more places; smaller leagues fewer. A high league finish or a domestic cup win is typically the way in.

Winning a continental club competition can now lead into FIFA's global club competitions in different ways. The current champions of the six confederations play in the annual FIFA Intercontinental Cup, while the expanded FIFA Club World Cup is played every four years and uses a wider qualification system based on continental titles and rankings across a four-year cycle. This is what makes continental football the middle layer of the club game — domestic competitions feed in, and intercontinental competitions follow.

The European Cup, the predecessor to the Champions League, was launched in 1955 and became the model for modern confederation-wide club competitions. The Copa Libertadores followed in 1960. The other confederations launched their own competitions over the following decades — the CONCACAF Champions Cup in 1962, the African Cup of Champions Clubs in 1964, and the Asian Champion Club Tournament in 1967.

Each competition has evolved over time, generally in the direction of more teams and more matches. The biggest recent change has been UEFA's move from a group stage to a 36-team league phase across all three of its club competitions in 2024. Other confederations have made their own adjustments, and FIFA's relaunch of the Intercontinental Cup in 2024 and expansion of the Club World Cup in 2025 added a new layer above the continental game.