Continental club football
The UEFA Europa League
The UEFA Europa League is the second-tier club competition in European football, sitting below the Champions League and above the Conference League. It uses the same 36-team league phase as the Champions League and gives its winner an automatic route into the following season's Champions League.
What the Europa League is
The Europa League is UEFA's second-tier club competition.
The Europa League is contested by 36 clubs from across Europe, drawn mainly from domestic league finishes and cup wins, plus qualifying-round clubs that did not make the Champions League. The winner earns a place in the next Champions League, which gives the competition a clear sporting incentive beyond the trophy itself — a route into Europe's top club tournament without having to finish in a Champions League qualifying place at home.
The competition was founded in 1971 as the UEFA Cup and was renamed the Europa League in 2009. After the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup ended in 1999, domestic cup winners were folded into the UEFA Cup qualification route. As the successor to the UEFA Cup, the Europa League is one of European football's long-running continental club competitions.
The league phase
The Europa League uses the same 36-team league-phase format as the Champions League.
All 36 clubs are placed into a single combined league. Each team plays eight different opponents — four at home and four away — drawn from a seeded pot system. Three points are awarded for a win, one for a draw and none for a defeat. At the end of the eight league-phase matches, all 36 teams are ranked in one combined table.
The top eight teams progress directly to the round of 16. Teams ranked from ninth to twenty-fourth go into a two-legged knockout play-off to decide the other eight round-of-16 places. Teams ranked 25th to 36th are eliminated from European competition for the season — they do not drop down into the Conference League the way teams used to drop down from the Champions League into the Europa League under the old group-stage format.
The knockout stage
From the round of 16 onwards the competition follows a two-legged knockout structure, with a single-match final.
Two-legged knockouts
The round of 16, quarter-finals and semi-finals are all played over two legs, one at each team's home ground. The team with the higher aggregate score over both matches goes through. Extra time and penalty shoot-outs are used to settle ties that are level after both legs.
The final
The Europa League final is a single match held at a neutral venue selected by UEFA two seasons in advance. The match is played in late May, usually a week before the Champions League final. Extra time and penalties decide the match if scores are level after 90 minutes.
Bracket seeding
The knockout bracket is seeded based on each team's finishing position in the league phase. As in the Champions League, higher-ranked teams play lower-ranked opponents in the early knockout rounds.
No away goals rule
UEFA dropped the away goals rule across all its club competitions in 2021. Goals scored away from home count the same as goals scored at home.
When the Europa League takes place
The Europa League runs in parallel with the Champions League across the European football season.
Qualifying rounds for the smaller-league entrants begin in early July. The league phase is played from September to the end of January. The knockout play-offs are held in February, the round of 16 in March, the quarter-finals in April, the semi-finals in late April and early May, and the final in late May.
Europa League matches are usually played on Thursdays rather than Tuesdays or Wednesdays. This gives the competition its own European matchnight, separate from the Champions League's usual Tuesday and Wednesday schedule, and helps UEFA and broadcasters organise the continental calendar.
How clubs qualify
Most Europa League places come from domestic league finishes and cup wins.
The number of places each country receives is set by UEFA's country coefficient. The strongest leagues get two or three places, with the exact split depending on the coefficient cycle. The places are typically allocated to the clubs finishing fifth or sixth in the top-flight league, plus the winner of the main domestic cup. In smaller leagues, the Europa League place may go to the team finishing second or third in the league, with the cup winner taking another European place.
Clubs that are eliminated from the Champions League qualifying rounds also drop down into the Europa League at various stages, depending on where they were eliminated. This means the Europa League's final field is a mix of direct entrants from domestic leagues and cups, and Champions League qualifying-round losers.
What clubs qualify for
The Europa League's winner gets a major reward beyond the trophy itself.
The winner of the Europa League qualifies automatically for the next season's Champions League league phase. This rule has been in place since 2015 and has made the Europa League an unusually attractive second-tier competition — a club outside its country's top-four finishers can still reach the Champions League by winning the Europa League.
The Europa League winner also plays the Champions League winner in the UEFA Super Cup the following August. There is no direct path from the Europa League into the FIFA Club World Cup or FIFA Intercontinental Cup, but a club that wins the Europa League and then wins the Champions League the following year would, of course, enter both.
The most successful clubs
One club has won the Europa League considerably more often than any other.
Sevilla
The most successful club in the competition's history, with seven titles between 2006 and 2023. Sevilla are the only club to have won the competition three years in a row (2014, 2015 and 2016) and have never lost a Europa League final.
Liverpool, Inter Milan and Juventus
Three titles each, mostly won under the older UEFA Cup name. Liverpool's three wins came in 1973, 1976 and 2001; Inter's in 1991, 1994 and 1998; Juventus's in 1977, 1990 and 1993.
Other multiple winners
Atlético Madrid, Tottenham, Chelsea, Borussia Mönchengladbach, Feyenoord, Eintracht Frankfurt, IFK Göteborg, Parma, Porto and Real Madrid have all won the competition more than once. Atlético Madrid have won the competition three times since the 2009 rebrand, while Sevilla remain the dominant club of the modern Europa League era.
A Spanish-dominated competition
Spanish clubs have won the Europa League more often than clubs from any other country, with fourteen titles in total. English clubs are next with eleven titles, followed by Italian clubs with ten. Aston Villa's win in 2026 was England's most recent in the competition.
A short history
The Europa League grew out of the UEFA Cup, which began in 1971.
The competition began in 1971 as the UEFA Cup, replacing the unofficial Inter-Cities Fairs Cup that had run since the 1950s. Tottenham Hotspur won the inaugural final in 1972, beating Wolverhampton Wanderers across two legs. The competition grew steadily over the following decades, with its profile rising as more clubs qualified through their league position rather than just through cup wins.
UEFA discontinued the Cup Winners' Cup in 1999 and folded domestic cup winners into the UEFA Cup qualification route. In 2009 the competition was renamed the Europa League and given a group-stage format similar to the Champions League. The current 36-team league phase, introduced in 2024, was the most significant format change since the rebrand.
Women's and youth versions
UEFA has launched a second-tier women's club competition, but there is no direct junior version of the Europa League.
The UEFA Women's Europa Cup is a new women's club competition introduced for the 2025–26 season. It sits alongside the UEFA Women's Champions League and gives more clubs a route into European women's football, although it is not a direct format equivalent of the men's Europa League. The men's Europa League does not have a direct under-19 equivalent — youth competition at that level is contested through the UEFA Youth League, which runs alongside the men's Champions League rather than the Europa League.
What to read next
From the Europa League, the natural next step is the level above or the third-tier sibling competition.