The UEFA Conference League

The competition was created to widen access to European club football. Before 2021, only clubs from the larger and mid-sized European leagues had a realistic chance of reaching the group stage of a UEFA competition. The Champions League and Europa League between them included only a small number of clubs from the smaller leagues, and most of those were knocked out in qualifying rounds before the main competitions began. The Conference League was added as a third tier specifically so that clubs from these smaller leagues could play several competitive European matches each season.

The competition was originally named the UEFA Europa Conference League. In 2024 it was renamed simply the UEFA Conference League — partly to disambiguate it from the Europa League, and partly to give it its own identity now that it has settled in as the third pillar of UEFA's club calendar.

All 36 clubs are placed into one combined league. Each team plays six league-phase matches — three at home and three away — against six different opponents drawn from a seeded pot system. That is two fewer than the Champions League and Europa League, where each club plays eight league-phase matches.

At the end of the league phase, the 36 teams are ranked in a single combined table. The top eight progress directly to the round of 16. Teams ranked from ninth to twenty-fourth go into a two-legged knockout play-off for the other eight round-of-16 places. The bottom twelve are eliminated.

Qualifying for the Conference League begins in July, with the lowest-ranked entrants playing several rounds of two-legged ties before the main competition starts. The league phase runs from October to December across six matchdays — one or two each month. The knockout play-offs are held in February, the round of 16 in March, the quarter-finals and semi-finals in April and May, and the final in late May.

Matches are usually played on Thursdays, sharing UEFA's Thursday-night slot with the Europa League. The Conference League has fewer league-phase matchdays than the Europa League, so its calendar is slightly lighter while still avoiding normal weekend domestic fixtures.

The competition is weighted towards clubs from smaller European leagues. The lowest-ranked entrants enter at the earliest qualifying rounds and need to win several two-legged ties to reach the league phase. Clubs from larger leagues enter at later rounds, but they still have to come through qualifying rather than being placed straight into the league phase.

No club is placed directly into the Conference League league phase. The 36-team field is made up of clubs that come through Conference League qualifying and clubs that drop in from Europa League qualifying. Unlike under the old group-stage format, where teams could drop down from a higher competition's group stage to a lower competition's knockout, the modern league-phase format keeps each competition's field largely separate from the others.

The winner of the Conference League qualifies for the next season's Europa League league phase. This is the equivalent of the Europa League's link to the Champions League — winning the third-tier competition gives a club a guaranteed place in the second-tier one the following year. If the Conference League winner has already qualified for the Champions League through its domestic league, UEFA's access-list rules decide what happens next. The titleholder may choose between entering the Champions League or taking its Europa League league-phase place; if it enters the Champions League, the Europa League place is reallocated through UEFA's rebalancing process rather than simply passing to another club from the same country.

There is no direct path from the Conference League into the FIFA Club World Cup or FIFA Intercontinental Cup. To reach those, a club must first win the Conference League, then the Europa League, then the Champions League over successive seasons. No club has done so to date, although several have used the Conference League as a springboard to higher European competition the following year.

Roma won the inaugural Conference League in 2022, beating Feyenoord 1–0 in the final in Tirana. It was Italy's first major European trophy in over a decade. West Ham United won the second edition in 2023, beating Fiorentina in the final, and remain the only club to have won the Conference League unbeaten across a full season. Olympiacos won the third edition in 2024 — the first major European trophy won by any Greek club. Chelsea won the fourth edition in 2025, beating Real Betis 4–1 in the final.

Across the four editions, three different countries have produced winners — Italy, England and Greece. England is the only country to have produced two winners so far, through West Ham United and Chelsea.

UEFA announced the new third-tier competition in 2018 after several years of discussion. The aim was to spread European football's reach across more national associations — too many smaller leagues had been left without any clubs in the European group stages by the late 2010s. The first edition was played in 2021–22, with Roma's win signalling a competitive tournament that could attract serious clubs.

The competition's profile has grown across its first few seasons. Clubs from the bigger leagues have increasingly treated it as a serious European trophy, partly because the Europa League place at the end of it gives the competition real sporting weight. The 2024 rebrand and the new league-phase format brought the Conference League into line with the rest of UEFA's club competitions and confirmed it as a permanent third pillar.

There is no direct Women's Conference League or Youth Conference League equivalent. In women's football, UEFA now runs the Women's Champions League and the Women's Europa Cup, which launched in 2025–26 as a second women's club competition. In youth football, UEFA runs the UEFA Youth League, but there is no separate Conference League-style third-tier youth competition.