| Tourney Name: | UEFA Europa League |
| Year: | 2024–25 |
| Size: | 275 |
| Dates: | Qualifying: 11 July – 29 August 2024 Competition proper: 25 September 2024 – 21 May 2025 |
| Num Teams: | Competition proper: 36 Total: 46+32 |
| Associations: | 33–48 |
| Prevseason: | 2023–24 |
| Nextseason: | 2025–26 |
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 as would all future Europa League winners as the winner of the Europa League automatically qualifies for the Champions League.
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:
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| Teams entering in this round | Teams advancing from the previous round | Teams transferred from Champions League | |||
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| First qualifying round (12 teams) |
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| Second qualifying round (18 teams) |
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| Third qualifying round (26 teams) | Champions path (12 teams) |
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| League path (14 teams) |
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| Play-off round (24 teams) |
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| League phase (36 teams) |
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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.[5] 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 introduced where both Wednesday and Thursdays are matchdays, held on September 25 and 26.[6] [7] [8]
| Phase | Round | Draw date | First leg | Second leg |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qualifying | First qualifying round | 18 June 2024 | 11 July 2024 | 18 July 2024 |
| Second qualifying round | 19 June 2024 | 25 July 2024 | 1 August 2024 | |
| Third qualifying round | 22 July 2024 | 8 August 2024 | 15 August 2024 | |
| Play-offs | Play-off round | 5 August 2024 | 22 August 2024 | 29 August 2024 |
| League phase | Matchday 1 | 30 August 2024 | 25–26 September 2024 | |
| Matchday 2 | 3 October 2024 | |||
| Matchday 3 | 24 October 2024 | |||
| Matchday 4 | 7 November 2024 | |||
| Matchday 5 | 28 November 2024 | |||
| Matchday 6 | 12 December 2024 | |||
| Matchday 7 | 23 January 2025 | |||
| Matchday 8 | 30 January 2025 | |||
| Knockout phase | Knockout round play-offs | 31 January 2025 | 13 February 2025 | 20 February 2025 |
| Round of 16 | 21 February 2025 | 6 March 2025 | 13 March 2025 | |
| Quarter-finals | 10 April 2025 | 17 April 2025 | ||
| Semi-finals | 1 May 2025 | 8 May 2025 | ||
| Final | 21 May 2025 at San Mamés Stadium, Bilbao | |||
The draw, which will determine the pairings for the league phase, will be held on 30 August 2024. The 36 teams will be divided into four pots of nine clubs. The pots will be composed according to the club coefficient rankings established at the beginning of the season.[9]
Each team will play eight games, four at home and four away, against eight different teams (two from each pot). In principle, teams from the same association cannot be drawn against each other and each team may play against a maximum of two opponents from any other one association.
All teams will make their debut appearances in the inaugural league phase.
| width=15% | Pot 1 | width=12% | Pot 1 or 2 | width=12% | Pot 2 | width=35% | Pot TBD | width=26% | Pot 3 or 4 | |
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| valign=top | valign=top | valign=top | valign=top |
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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.[10]
See main article: 2025 UEFA Europa League final.