The 2024–25 UEFA Europa League will be the 54th season of Europe's secondary club football tournament organised by UEFA, and the 16th season since it was renamed from the UEFA Cup to the UEFA Europa League. This will be the first season played under a new format, which replaces the 32-team group stage with a 36-team league phase.[1] The new format also does not allow teams to transfer from the Champions League knockout stage to the Europa League knockout stage, and thus Europa League winners (Atalanta in the 2023–24 edition) cannot defend their title.
The final will be played on 21 May 2025 at San Mamés stadium in Bilbao, Spain.[2] The winners of the 2024–25 UEFA Europa League will automatically qualify for the 2025–26 UEFA Champions League league phase and earn the right to play against the winners of the 2024–25 UEFA Champions League in the 2025 UEFA Super Cup.
A total of 76 teams from between 32 and 47 of the 55 UEFA member associations are expected to participate in the 2024–25 UEFA Europa League. Among them, 32 associations have teams directly qualifying for the Europa League, while up to 15 associations that do not have any teams directly qualifying may have teams playing after being transferred from the Champions League. The association ranking based on the UEFA association coefficients is used to determine the number of participating teams for each association:[3]
For the 2024–25 UEFA Europa League, the associations are allocated places according to their 2023 UEFA association coefficients, which takes into account their performance in European competitions from 2018–19 to 2022–23.[4]
Apart from the allocation based on the association coefficients, associations may have additional teams participating in the Europa League, as noted below:
The information here reflects the ongoing suspension of Russia in European football, and so the following changes to the default access list have been made:
As the Europa League title holders (Atalanta) qualified for the Champions League via their domestic league's standard berth allocation, the following changes to the default access list have been made:
The labels in the parentheses show how each team qualified for the place of its starting round:
The third qualifying round is divided into Champions Path (CH) and Main Path (MP).
The schedule of the competition is as follows.[7] Matches are scheduled for Thursdays, apart from the final, which takes place on a Wednesday, though exceptionally can take place on Tuesdays or Wednesdays due to scheduling conflicts. Compared to past seasons, one exclusive week will be held on September 25 and 26.[8][9][10]
The draw for the first qualifying round was held on 18 June 2024. The first legs were played on 11 July, and the second legs were played on 18 July 2024.
The winners of the ties advanced to the second qualifying round. The losers were transferred to the Conference League Main Path second qualifying round.
The draw for the second qualifying round was held on 19 June 2024. The first legs were played on 25 July, and the second legs will be played on 1 August 2024.
The winners of the ties will advance to the Main Path third qualifying round. The losers will be transferred to the Conference League Main Path third qualifying round.
The draw for the third qualifying round was held on 22 July 2024. The first legs will be played on 8 August, and the second legs will be played on 15 August 2024.
The winners of the ties will advance to the play-off round. The Champions Path losers will be transferred to the Conference League Champions Path play-off round, while the Main Path losers will be transferred to the Conference League Main Path play-off round.
The draw for the play-off round will be held on 5 August 2024.
A total of 24 teams will play in the play-off round. Seeding of the teams will be based on their 2024 UEFA club coefficients.[11] For the winners of the third qualifying round, whose identity will not be known at the time of the draw, the club coefficient of the highest-ranked remaining team in each tie will be used. For the losers of the Champions League third qualifying round, the club coefficient of the lower-ranked team in each tie will be used. Before the draw, UEFA may form groups of seeded and unseeded teams per the principles set by the Club Competitions Committee. The first team drawn in each tie will be the home team for the first leg.
A total of 36 teams will play in the league phase.
Each team plays eight games, four at home and four away, against eight different teams (two from each pot).
Teams ranked 1st–8th qualify directly for the round of 16 in the knockout stage, while the teams ranked 9th–24th compete in a playoff round, with the eight winners advancing to the round of 16. In this playoff round, the teams ranked 9th–16th are seeded. Teams ranked 25th–36th are eliminated from all competitions, with no access to the 2024–25 UEFA Conference League.[12]
