How Does the Europa League Work? The 36-Club League Phase and the Champions League Prize

From the play-off round to the final

In the knockout play-offs, ninth to 16th take on 17th to 24th, with the higher-placed side normally at home in the second leg. Pairings are tied to final table position, so ninth and 10th meet 23rd or 24th, and so on down the line.

The winners then face the top eight in the round of 16. From there, clubs can face opposition from their own national association, and even sides they met in the league phase, and every knockout tie except the final is played over two legs.

Level on aggregate? Then it's two 15-minute periods of extra-time and then a penalty shootout. Away goals don't come into it, as UEFA scrapped the away-goals rule in all its club competitions from the 2021/22 season.

Going out in the league phase means going out of Europe. Clubs who finish 25th to 36th don't drop into the Conference League, and Champions League clubs ranked 25th to 36th in their league phase are simply eliminated too, so there's no parachute into the Europa League either. The only Champions League clubs who still drop down are those beaten in qualifying, and UEFA's list of 2026/27 league phase qualifiers shows 11 of them, including Celtic, Lyon and Olympiacos.

The Europa League prize: A Champions League place

The 2026/27 winners gain a place in the league phase of the 2027/28 Champions League unless they have already qualified through their league or cup. The rule has applied since the 2014/15 edition, with Sevilla the first winners to benefit, but plenty of fans still treat the Europa League as a consolation prize.

Villa show what happens when the winners have already qualified. They also finished fourth in the Premier League, so they were heading to the Champions League anyway - but their winners' slot didn't go to waste, as UEFA passed it to Sporting CP, the club with the best individual coefficient among the teams in Champions League qualifying.

For a club sitting mid-table at home, that makes the Europa League a second route into the Champions League: 17 matches at most from the league phase to the final, against a 38-game Premier League season.

The money's not bad either. Each of the 36 clubs receives €4.31million from UEFA for reaching the 2026/27 league phase, plus €450,000 for every league-phase win and €150,000 for a draw, while both finalists receive €7m and the winners take a further €6m.

The catch is the fixture load. A deep run means a Thursday-Sunday rhythm through the spring, and for an English club that can push their weekend Premier League fixture to the Sunday.

How English clubs get in

In 2026/27, AFC Bournemouth and Sunderland qualified through the league, finishing sixth and seventh in the 2025/26 Premier League, while Crystal Palace got in by winning the 2025/26 Conference League. There are three ways in for an English club:

• League position - Finish in the Premier League place or places directly below the Champions League spots

• The FA Cup - The FA Cup winners are granted a Europa League place

• The Conference League - Win the previous season's Conference League, if not already qualified another way

The number of English places isn't fixed. If the cup winners have already qualified through the league, their place goes to another top-flight club, and an extra Champions League place pushes the line further down the table. In 2025/26, the Premier League earned a fifth Champions League spot through one of UEFA's two European Performance Spots, so the first place below the Champions League spots was sixth, not fifth - which is how Bournemouth got in.

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