Conference League News

Your Complete Guide to the UEFA Conference League

When UEFA announced a third European club competition back in 2018, the reaction was lukewarm at best. Another midweek game? Another trophy nobody asked for? The critics were wrong. The Conference League has quickly carved out its own identity, producing genuine drama and handing clubs moments they’ll be talking about for generations.

What is the Conference League?

The UEFA Conference League sits below the Champions League and the Europa League in UEFA’s club competition structure. It was designed to bring more clubs from across Europe into continental competition — including sides from smaller associations that had little hope of qualifying for the bigger tournaments. The result is a competition with a different feel. You get genuine underdogs. You get nights where a tiny club with a 10,000-capacity ground hosts a side from a top-five league. That stuff matters.

The trophy itself is 57.5cm tall and weighs 11kg. Small by Champions League standards. But it means everything to the clubs who lift it.

How does the Conference League work?

The competition begins in June with three qualifying rounds, giving clubs from lower-ranked UEFA associations a route in from the very start of the summer. Teams from stronger leagues enter at the play-off stage in August.

The League Phase

Once the qualifiers are done, 36 clubs enter what UEFA calls the league phase — a format borrowed from the revamped Champions League and Europa League. Each side plays six matches against six different opponents, with three home games and three away. All 36 teams share a single league table.

The top eight sides after those six rounds go straight into the round of 16. Teams finishing ninth to 24th enter a two-legged play-off for the remaining knockout spots. Finish 25th or lower and you are out of European football entirely — no safety net, no dropping into a lesser competition. That sharpens the focus considerably.

The Knockout Stage

From the round of 16 onwards, it is two-legged ties all the way to the semi-finals, with the final held at a neutral venue in late May. Unlike the older format, no teams drop down from the Europa League into the Conference League knockout rounds. The field you face is the field that earned its place in the competition. That change has made the latter stages noticeably more competitive.

Who has won the Conference League?

Five editions have been completed. Five different winners. No team has retained the trophy yet, which tells you something about how difficult it is to dominate a competition spread across so much of the continent.

AS Roma won the inaugural edition in 2021-22, beating Fiorentina in the final in Tirana. José Mourinho became the first manager to win all three major UEFA club competitions. West Ham took the trophy a year later, beating Fiorentina in Prague. The Hammers’ supporters still sing about that night.

Olympiacos wrote one of the more remarkable stories in 2023-24. The Greek side became the first club from their country to win a major European honour, with Ayoub El Kaabi scoring the winner in extra time in a final held on home soil in Athens. El Kaabi finished the tournament with 11 goals, a competition record for a single season.

Chelsea followed in 2024-25, becoming the first club in history to complete the set of all three major UEFA trophies. Crystal Palace then made it three English winners from five editions in 2025-26, beating Rayo Vallecano 1-0 in Leipzig. For a club playing European football for only the second time in their history, it was a result that few would have predicted at the start of the campaign.

Fiorentina hold the unfortunate distinction of being the only club to reach more than one Conference League final. They lost both.

Why the Conference League matters

There is a version of this competition that could have felt like a consolation prize — somewhere for clubs who almost made the Europa League to fill their Thursdays. It has not turned out that way.

Part of the reason is the prize at the end. The Conference League winner earns a guaranteed place in the following season’s Europa League, giving the trophy genuine sporting weight beyond the silverware itself. For a mid-table Premier League side or a club from a smaller European league, that is a significant step up in continental exposure and revenue.

The other part is the football itself. Matches between sides who are genuinely evenly matched tend to produce better games than the mismatches that can crop up in the later rounds of the bigger competitions. Nobody is walking through their group phase in the Conference League.

English clubs in the Conference League

England’s record in the competition is strong. West Ham, Chelsea and Crystal Palace have all won it. No other country has produced three Conference League champions. The consistent thread across those three campaigns is that the English clubs involved treated the competition seriously rather than rotating their way through it.

For Premier League sides who miss out on European qualification through their league, the Conference League offers something worth chasing. Three clubs have proved that by going all the way.

Follow the Conference League on 101 Great Goals

This page brings together all the latest Conference League news, results, previews and analysis from the 101 Great Goals team. Whether it is team news ahead of a knockout tie or a look back at a memorable European night, you will find it here.