2020–21 UEFA Champions League


The 2020–21 UEFA Champions League will be the 66th season of Europe's premier club football tournament organised by UEFA, and the 29th season since it was renamed from the European Champion Clubs' Cup to the UEFA Champions League.
The final will be played at the Atatürk Olympic Stadium in Istanbul, Turkey. The stadium was originally appointed to host the 2020 UEFA Champions League Final, but this was moved due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The winners of the 2020–21 UEFA Champions League will automatically qualify for the 2021–22 UEFA Champions League group stage and also earn the right to play against the winners of the 2020–21 UEFA Europa League in the 2021 UEFA Super Cup.

Association team allocation

A total of 79, 80 or 81 teams from 54 of the 55 UEFA member associations participate in the 2020–21 UEFA Champions League. The association ranking based on the UEFA country coefficients is used to determine the number of participating teams for each association:
For the 2020–21 UEFA Champions League, the associations are allocated places according to their 2019 UEFA country coefficients, which takes into account their performance in European competitions from 2014–15 to 2018–19.
Apart from the allocation based on the country coefficients, associations may have additional teams participating in the Champions League, as noted below:
The following is the default access list.
Changes will be made to the access list above if the Champions League and/or Europa League title holders qualify for the tournament via their domestic leagues.
As a result of schedule delays to both the 2019–20 and 2020–21 European seasons due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020–21 European season will start before the conclusion of the 2019–20 European season. Therefore, the changes to the access list that should be made based on which teams are the Champions League and Europa League title holders may not be certain after matches of the earlier qualifying rounds have been played and/or their draws have been made. UEFA will use "adaptive re-balancing" to change the access list once the berths for the Champions League and Europa League title holders are determined, and "will ensure that the competition rounds of the qualifying phase that have already been drawn or played at the moment the titleholders are determined will not be impacted." The following scenarios are possible:
In early April 2020, UEFA announced that due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe, the deadline for entering the tournament had been postponed until further notice. UEFA also sent a letter to all member associations that domestic leagues must be completed in full without ending prematurely in order to qualify for European competitions. After meeting with the 55 UEFA associations on 21 April 2020, UEFA strongly recommended them to finish domestic top league and cup competitions, although in some special cases where it is not possible, UEFA would develop guidelines concerning participation in its club competitions in case of a cancelled league or cup. After the UEFA Executive Committee meeting on 23 April 2020, UEFA announced that if a domestic competition is prematurely terminated for legitimate reasons in accordance with conditions related to public health or economic problems, the national associations concerned are required to select their participating teams for the 2020–21 UEFA club competitions based on sporting merit in the 2019–20 domestic competitions, and UEFA reserves the right to refuse their admission if UEFA deems the termination of the competitions not legitimate, or the selection procedure not objective, transparent and non-discriminatory, or the team is perceived by the public as qualifying unfairly. A suspended domestic competition may also be restarted with a different format from the original one in a manner which would still facilitate qualification on sporting merit. All leagues should communicate to UEFA by 25 May 2020 whether they intend to restart their competitions, but this deadline was later extended. On 17 June 2020, UEFA announced that associations must enter their teams by 3 August 2020.
The labels in the parentheses show how each team qualified for the place of its starting round:
The second qualifying round, third qualifying round and play-off round are divided into Champions Path and League Path.
Notes

Schedule

The schedule of the competition is as follows. The tournament would originally have started in June 2020, but had been delayed to August due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe. The new schedule was announced by the UEFA Executive Committee on 17 June 2020.
All qualifying matches, excluding the play-off round, will be played as single leg matches, hosted by one of the teams decided by draw, and will be played behind closed doors.
The original schedule of the competition, as planned before the pandemic, was as follows.

Preliminary round

The winners of the final round will advance to the first qualifying round, while the losers of both semi-final and final rounds will enter the 2020–21 UEFA Europa League second qualifying round.

Qualifying rounds

Note: All qualified teams below are listed with their 2020 UEFA club coefficients, updated after 2019–20 UEFA Champions/Europa League matches on 12 March 2020. Club coefficients which are not final and may increase are marked by ≥. For any team whose club coefficients are not final at the time of a draw, their club coefficients at that time will be used.

First qualifying round

Second qualifying round

Third qualifying round

Play-off round

Group stage

The 32 teams are drawn into eight groups of four, with the restriction that teams from the same association cannot be drawn against each other. For the draw, the teams are seeded into four pots based on the following principles :
In each group, teams play against each other home-and-away in a round-robin format. The group winners and runners-up advance to the [|round of 16], while the third-placed teams enter the 2020–21 UEFA Europa League round of 32.
The youth teams of the clubs that qualify for the group stage also participate in the 2020–21 UEFA Youth League on the same matchdays, where they compete in the UEFA Champions League Path.
A total of 32 teams play in the group stage: 26 teams which enter in this stage, and the six winners of the play-off round. İstanbul Başakşehir will make their debut appearance in the group stage.
;Pot 1
;Pot 1 or 2
;Pot 2
;Pot 1, 2 or 3
;Pot 1 or 3
;Pot 3
;Pot 1, 3 or 4
;Pot 3 or 4