UEFA Conference League 2025/2026: spring in Leipzig is still a long way off, but eight clubs can already see the final

The UEFA Conference League in the 2025/2026 season has entered that stretch when the competition is no longer viewed through the table and the draw, but through the faces of the clubs that survived the winter. It all began on 10 July 2025, through qualifying rounds scattered across Europe’s periphery and serious footballing addresses, and it will end on 27 May 2026 in Leipzig. On that path there is no longer any shelter: eight clubs remain, and among them there is not a single one that could say it reached the quarter-finals by accident. This is the fifth season of the competition and the second since UEFA removed the old group schedule and introduced the new format with one large league phase. For the Conference League, that meant 36 clubs in the main part of the tournament, but also one important distinction compared with the Champions League and the Europa League: here, each team in the league phase played six matches, against six different opponents, three at home and three away. There were no traditional groups, but one shared table. The top eight went directly into the round of 16, the clubs from 9th to 24th place played a knockout play-off for the remaining eight places, and those from 25th to 36th were eliminated without a second chance.

How the season is structured and where its exact turning points are

The competition practically had three different rhythms. Summer was qualifying, autumn was table-based, and spring was knockout. Anyone who came through every step had to endure football for almost the entire year.

• 1st qualifying round: 10 and 17 July 2025
• 2nd qualifying round: 24 and 31 July 2025
• 3rd qualifying round: 7 and 14 August 2025
• Play-offs: 21 and 28 August 2025
• League phase: 2 October, 23 October, 6 November, 27 November, 11 December and 18 December 2025
• Round of 16 play-offs: 19 and 26 February 2026
• Round of 16: 12 and 19 March 2026
• Quarter-finals: 9 and 16 April 2026
• Semi-finals: 30 April and 7 May 2026
• Final: 27 May 2026, Leipzig

That is a schedule that clearly explains why the Conference League has become a serious test of squad depth. In this competition it is no longer enough to have a good autumn and two in-form strikers. Anyone who wants the trophy must survive from mid-summer to the very end of May.

36 clubs in the league phase: names, countries and footballing addresses

The league phase brought exactly the kind of range UEFA wants from its third continental competition: well-known names from strong leagues, but also clubs for whom this is a platform for a European breakthrough.

• Armenia: Noah
• Austria: SK Rapid
• Bosnia and Herzegovina: Zrinjski
• Croatia: Rijeka
• Cyprus: AEK Larnaca, Omonoia
• Czech Republic: Sigma Olomouc, Sparta Praha
• England: Crystal Palace
• Finland: KuPS Kuopio
• France: Strasbourg
• Germany: Mainz
• Gibraltar: Lincoln Red Imps
• Greece: AEK Athens
• Iceland: Breidablik
• Italy: Fiorentina
• Kosovo: Drita
• Malta: Hamrun Spartans
• Netherlands: AZ Alkmaar
• North Macedonia: Shkëndija
• Poland: Jagiellonia Białystok, Lech Poznań, Legia Warsaw, Raków Częstochowa
• Republic of Ireland: Shamrock Rovers, Shelbourne
• Romania: Universitatea Craiova
• Scotland: Aberdeen
• Slovakia: Slovan Bratislava
• Slovenia: Celje
• Spain: Rayo Vallecano
• Sweden: Häcken
• Switzerland: Lausanne-Sport
• Turkey: Samsunspor
• Ukraine: Dynamo Kyiv, Shakhtar Donetsk

In that company, Croatia had Rijeka, which reached the round of 16 and ran into Strasbourg there. It did not go on to the quarter-finals, but the very fact that it was part of the spring phase says a lot about how important this tournament is for clubs from Europe’s middle tier. That is exactly where the Conference League breathes with full lungs: between big budgets and real ambition.

Who remained in the race in April 2026

By 7 April 2026, the story had narrowed down to eight quarter-finalists. They are AEK Athens, AZ Alkmaar, Crystal Palace, Fiorentina, Mainz, Rayo Vallecano, Shakhtar Donetsk and Strasbourg. The quarter-final pairings are arranged so that each carries its own special story.

• Shakhtar Donetsk – AZ Alkmaar
• Crystal Palace – Fiorentina
• Rayo Vallecano – AEK Athens
• Mainz – Strasbourg

On one side of the draw stands English debutant Crystal Palace against Fiorentina, a club that already knows this stage almost painfully well. On the same side is also Shakhtar, experienced and tough in Europe, against AZ, which reached this stage after a convincing 6:1 on aggregate against Sparta Prague in the round of 16. On the other side is Rayo Vallecano, the Madrid club from Vallecas, whose European face has always been different from the marketing shine of its larger neighbours. In the round of 16, Rayo got past Samsunspor with an aggregate score of 3:2. Standing opposite them is AEK Athens, third in the league phase, which eliminated Celje with an aggregate score of 4:2 and entered the quarter-finals as perhaps the most underrated team among the remaining company. Mainz and Strasbourg are playing a tie that looks like a passing footnote, yet it could easily become one of the key stories of the spring. Mainz finished seventh in the league phase and in the round of 16 eliminated Sigma Olomouc by 2:0 on aggregate. Strasbourg finished first in the league phase, and then, through Rijeka with an aggregate score of 3:2, confirmed that it had not reached spring merely on a wave of surprise.

Clubs worth looking at differently than just through the name

Fiorentina carries a special burden in the Conference League. It has played two finals and lost the trophy twice. In this competition that is already a story in itself: a club that knows how to reach the end of the road, but still does not know how to finish it with a medal around its neck that will be remembered. In the 2025/2026 season, it reached the quarter-finals through two difficult knockout rounds, first against Jagiellonia, then against Raków. It was not an elegant passage, but a workmanlike, hard and exhausting one. That is exactly why Fiorentina looks dangerous. Crystal Palace is a different case. For the club from south London, this is a European debut in the modern sense of the word, and reaching the quarter-finals is already one of the biggest international achievements in the club’s history. Palace did not come through an easy route: first Zrinjski, then AEK Larnaca after extra time. Teams like that in April are no longer playing only football, but also their own club autobiography. Shakhtar Donetsk has a European pedigree that goes beyond this level of competition. The winner of the 2008/2009 UEFA Cup entered the Conference League as a club for which a European spring is a natural environment. Against Lech in the round of 16, it was 4:3 on aggregate, which says enough about how seriously that progression was earned. Strasbourg is perhaps the most beautiful story among the remaining eight. First in the league phase, a young squad, the return of a French club to a serious European spring for the first time since the 2005/2006 season. It is not just a good result, but also a reminder that the Conference League knows how to open the door to clubs that are not used to Europe watching them in April.

Final stadium: Leipzig, the city and the stage

The final will be played at Leipzig Stadium in Leipzig. For the final match, UEFA lists a capacity of 39,700, while the stadium in a broader description is presented as an arena of around 47,000, depending on the event configuration. It is a venue that has already hosted major tournaments, including the 2006 World Cup and Euro 2024. For the Croatian public, it also remained memorable because of the dramatic 1:1 draw between Croatia and Italy at the Euros. Leipzig is not a случайный choice. It represents the new German football geography, a city that in recent years has become accustomed to European nights, but still does not have the saturation carried by older final cities. That is why it is interesting that the competition UEFA conceived as a European space for different kinds of clubs and different trajectories will end there.

History of the competition: four finals, four winners, one wound that keeps returning

The Conference League began in the 2021/2022 season and so far has not had a serial ruler. Each season so far has produced a different winner.

• 2021/2022: Roma – Feyenoord 1:0
• 2022/2023: West Ham – Fiorentina 2:1
• 2023/2024: Olympiacos – Fiorentina 1:0 after extra time
• 2024/2025: Chelsea – Real Betis 4:1

These are results that show two things. The first is that the competition is truly open: the trophy has not remained locked within one league or one circle of the rich. The second is that Fiorentina has become the first great emotional chapter of the Conference League without winning the trophy. Two finals, two defeats, both hard enough to be remembered. Last season’s winner Chelsea beat Real Betis 4:1 in the final in Wrocław and became the current title holder on paper, but not a participant in the new final stage. That triumph also had additional historical weight: Chelsea thereby completed its European trophy collection and became the first club to win all current major UEFA club trophies.

Figures, records and statistics that give the competition a face

The Conference League is a young competition, but it already has numbers of its own that are worth more than a dry piece of data. The biggest win in the history of the competition remains Chelsea – Noah 8:0 from November 2024. In the 2025/2026 season, the most emphatic wins in the main phase were AEK Athens – Aberdeen 6:0 and Dynamo Kyiv – Zrinjski 6:0. Those two matches are a reminder of how, in this tournament, a team’s momentum can turn into a complete avalanche. The largest attendance for a knockout match in the history of the competition remains 63,940 spectators at the Roma – Leicester semi-final in 2022. That is a figure that crushes the condescending view of the Conference League. Once it goes deep into spring, this tournament no longer looks like an add-on to the European calendar, but like a truly big stage. Among the individual records, the fact that Mikael Ishak is the all-time top scorer in the competition with 13 goals stands out in particular. That is exactly what gives this season an additional twist, because Ishak was once again near the top of the scorers’ rankings and, before Lech’s elimination, showed that the Conference League remembers strikers who keep returning to it. In the current season, immediately before the quarter-finals, UEFA also highlighted the race for top scorer, in which Mikael Ishak of Lech and Marius Mouandilmadji of Samsunspor were level. Both were at the top of the list with six goals, even though their clubs had already left the competition. That is another charm of this tournament: a scorer can remain high on the list even when his team is no longer in it.

Interesting details that do not fit into goals and the draw

AEK Athens carries an entire history of displacement in its name. The club was founded in 1924 by Greek refugees from what was then Constantinople, today’s Istanbul. When AEK reaches a European spring, it is not only a sporting story unfolding in the background, but also a century of identity. Crystal Palace is almost an anomaly in Europe, and that is precisely why it is so interesting. The club from Croydon, on the southern side of the Thames, does not bring aristocratic London football, but its stubborn, neighbourhood version. In the Conference League, that profile suddenly makes perfect sense. Rayo Vallecano is perhaps best known for its shirt with a diagonal red sash, inspired by River Plate, but more important is the fact that Vallecas remains Vallecas even in Europe. Even when Rayo goes far, it does not look like a project, but like a club that has broken through with its own temperament. In Germany, Mainz is known as Karnevalsverein, the carnival club, and home goals there are celebrated to the famous melody Narrhallamarsch. Few quarter-finalists have such a distinctive local signature. Shakhtar, meanwhile, carries the mining past of Donbas in the very core of its name. When it appears in the final stages of a European competition, it always brings with it more than a tactical plan and formation; it brings an entire historical layer of Eastern Europe, further burdened by war and displacement, but still resilient in sporting terms.

Why the 2025/2026 season has already succeeded

The Conference League is often viewed through comparison with larger UEFA competitions, and that is actually what it needs least. It is enough to look at the remaining eight. There is no serial domination by the same clubs. There is no simple geographical logic. In the quarter-finals there are an English debutant, an Italian club with two fresh final scars, the French first-place finisher from the league phase, a German debutant, a Spanish neighbourhood club, a Greek giant from a historical story, a Dutch European specialist and a Ukrainian club that long ago learned to play under a kind of pressure that is not seen only on the scoreboard. That is where the real value of the tournament lies. The UEFA Conference League 2025/2026 is not just the final step of European club football. In April 2026, it looks like a competition where unfinished giants, new European voices and clubs that are good enough to conquer spring, but still not sure whether they can conquer May as well, meet.