UEFA is expanding its European Women's football competitions. Women's Champions League has been around since 2001 -originally known simply as UEFA Women's Cup- and gains more media coverage each, stablishing clubs like Olympique Lyonnais, Eintracht Frankfurt and FC Barcelona as the women's European elite.
Next year, more women's team will get the chance of playing in Europe, thanks to the newly created UEFA Women's Europa Cup. This competition, announced a year ago, will officially launch in the 2025/26 season, UEFA has confirmed.
It is the equivalent to the Men's Europa League. The name was revealed on Monday: "'Europa' is already known as a term associated with the second tier in European club football, while 'Cup' emphasises the new tournament's purely knockout format", UEFA said.
How does UEFA Europa Cup work
There are more details to know, including the design of the new trophy and the competition branding, that will be revealed in 2025. But so far, we already know that the Women's Europa Cup will take place over six rounds: two qualifying rounds, the round of 16, quarter-finals, semi-finals and, surprisingly, a two-legged final.
13 teams will fight for the Europa Cup: the third-placed teams in the domestic league from associations ranked 8-13 and the runners-up of associations ranked 18-24 will get direct qualification for the Women's Europa Cup.
Unlike modern men's Champìons League, with no relegation for Europa League, clubs eliminated in the Women's Champions League third qualifying round and runners-up and third-placed teams from second qualifying round, will enter Europa Cup via a "feeding" system.
Women's Champions League is also transformed
Winning Europa Cup automatically qualifies the club for the third qualifying round of the champions path of the following season's Women's Champions League.
And Women's Champions League itself has also been revamped, with a new League Phase instead of the traditional Group Stage, similar to Men's, but with less clubs (18 teams). After the League Phase, there will be a knockout playoff similar to men's, then quarter-finals, semifinals and the final (a single match in this case, unlike Europa Cup).
Seeing the results of the gruop stage this year clearly tells that there aren't many European Women's clubs with enough level to face the big European clubs, like Lyon, Barcelona, Chelsea, Bayern, Arsenal... so the creation of a second tier competition will surely invigorate European women's football and give more opportunities to clubs to grow.