Europa League Schedule & Fixtures

Keep updated with this season’s Europa League with a full list of the upcoming fixtures and previous results below.

How Does The Europa League Work?

Although the group stage of the Europa League starts in September, the competition itself actually begins much earlier in the summer. There are multiple qualifying rounds that early entrants in the competition must navigate their way through before then playing the Play-Off Round. At this stage there will be a mixture of Europa League qualified teams and some that have dropped down from the Champions League. The team that loses at this point will fall to the Europa Conference League group stage, while the winners are drawn into a Europa League group.

A total of 32 teams will enter the group stage each season and they are divided into four separate pots for the draw dependant on their UEFA club coefficient. One team from each pot will be drawn into each group, keeping most of the contenders out of each other’s groups. Teams from the same association also can’t be drawn alongside each other. Once the draw has been completed, there will be eight groups of four teams.

Each team must play each other twice during the group stage, once at home and once away. The team that earns the most points from those fixtures and finishes as the group winner will book their place in the knockout round. The team that finishes in second place will face a third-placed finisher from the Champions League group stage in the knockout round play-offs. As for the team that finishes in third, they will be demoted to the Europa Conference League, while fourth is eliminated from European competition altogether.

As mentioned above, the first stage of the knockout phase is the knockout round play-offs. These, like the remainder of the knockout phase, are played over two legs as each team enjoys home advantage once apiece. The aggregate winner over both legs will progress to the last 16 of the competition, a round to which the group winners have essentially been given a bye too. UEFA have since altered the rules so that away goals no longer count as double in the event of an aggregate tie, meaning the outright winner over the two legs will progress.

This continues all the way until the final, where the two undefeated teams meet at a neutral venue to play over 90 minutes to determine the winner of the Europa League and who will take home the prestigious trophy. The venue for the final changes annually and could be played at a participant’s home ground if they are able to reach the final, albeit the allocation of tickets will be split equally.