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Future second tier UEFA women's club competition

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Future second tier UEFA women's club competition
Organising bodyUEFA
Founded4 December 2023; 11 months ago (2023-12-04)
RegionEurope
Number of teams44
Related competitionsUEFA Women's Champions League

A second tier international women's association football competition is being planned by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), the governing body of the sport for Europe. It will serve as a secondary club competition below the UEFA Women's Champions League and will run concurrently to it.[1] The first edition is scheduled to take place in the 2025–26 season.[1]

Background

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After several decades successfully running knock-out competitions for men's football clubs, the UEFA Women's Cup was created in 2001 to offer similar opportunities for women's clubs.[1] The Women's Cup was renamed to the UEFA Women's Champions League in 2009 to match the styling of the men's tournament, and the tournament was expanded to include more clubs and more countries.[2]

Following UEFA's expansion of men's competitions with the third-tier Europa Conference League playing its first season in 2021, proposals for a second-tier women's competition were submitted to offer a similar increase in scale to the women's game. On 4 December 2023 UEFA announced that it would act on these proposals with the creation of a new second-tier tournament which would commence from the 2025–26 season.[1]

Format

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Similarly to the UEFA Europa League in men's football, clubs can enter the tournament both by virtue of their league position in the previous season or by elimination from early stages of the same season's Champions League. Unlike both the men's Europa League and the Champions League for both genders, the new tournament will be a pure knock-out tournament with no group stage. Every round, up to and including the final, will be played as a two-legged home-and-away tie.[1]

The tournament will be contested by 44 clubs in total – thirteen direct qualifiers from associations ranked 8–13 and 18–24 based on domestic league placement in the previous season plus thirty-one teams eliminated in the first and second qualifying rounds of the same season's Women's Champions League.[1]

Provisional access list[3]
Teams entering in this round Teams advancing from the previous round Teams entering from the Champions League
First round
(24 teams)
  • 7 runners-up from associations 18–24
  • 6 third-placed teams from associations 8–13
  • 7 third-placed teams from the first round champions path mini-tournaments
  • 4 third-placed teams from the first round league path mini-tournaments
Second round
(32 teams)
  • 12 winners from the first round
  • 4 losers from the second round champions path
  • 5 losers from the second round league path
  • 7 runners-up from the first round champions path mini-tournaments
  • 4 runners-up from the first round league path mini-tournaments
Round of 16
(16 teams)
  • 16 winners from the second round

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f "New UEFA Women's club football system explained". UEFA. 4 December 2023. Retrieved 5 December 2023.
  2. ^ "Women's Champions League details confirmed" (PDF). UEFA.com. Union of European Football Associations. Archived (PDF) from the original on 20 October 2012. Retrieved 8 May 2009.
  3. ^ "Provisional access list for the UEFA Women's Champions League and 2nd competition 2025/26" (PDF). uefa.com. UEFA. Retrieved 6 December 2023.
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