2021–22 UEFA Europa League
The 2021–22 UEFA Europa League will be the 51st season of Europe's secondary club football tournament organised by UEFA, and the 13th season since it was renamed from the UEFA Cup to the UEFA Europa League.
 The Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán in Seville will host the final. | |
| Tournament details | |
|---|---|
| Dates | Qualifying: 5–26 August 2021 Competition proper: 16 September 2021 – 18 May 2022 |
| Teams | Competition proper: 32+8 Total: 20+37 (from 30–35 associations) |
The final will be played at the Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán in Seville, Spain. It was originally scheduled to be played at the Puskás Aréna in Budapest, Hungary.[1] However, due to the postponement and relocation of the 2020 final, the final hosts were shifted back a year, with Budapest instead hosting the 2023 final.[2] The winners of the 2021–22 UEFA Europa League will automatically qualify for the 2022–23 UEFA Champions League group stage, and also earn the right to play against the winners of the 2021–22 UEFA Champions League in the 2022 UEFA Super Cup.
This season will be the first since 1998–99 (the last season when the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup was played) where three major European club competitions (UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, and the newly created UEFA Europa Conference League) are organised by UEFA. As a result, major changes to the format of the Europa League are made. The number of teams in the group stage are reduced from 48 to 32 teams, and the number of teams participating in qualifying are also reduced significantly. The first round of the knockout phase also now involves only the group stage runners-up and the Champions League third-placed teams, with the group winners directly advancing to the round of 16.[3]
Association team allocation
A total of 57 teams from between 30 and 35 of the 55 UEFA member associations are expected to participate in the 2021–22 UEFA Europa League. Among them, 15 associations have teams directly qualifying for the Europa League, while for the other 40 associations that do not have any teams directly qualifying, between 15 and 20 of them may have teams playing after being transferred from the Champions League (the only member association which cannot have a participant is Liechtenstein, which does not organise a domestic league, and can only enter their cup winner into the Europa Conference League given their association ranking). The association ranking based on the UEFA country coefficients is used to determine the number of participating teams for each association:
- Associations 1–5 each have two teams qualify.
- Associations 6–15 each have one team qualify.
- Moreover, 37 teams eliminated from the 2021–22 UEFA Champions League are transferred to the Europa League.
- In future seasons, the title holders of the UEFA Europa Conference League will be given an additional entry in the Europa League. However, this berth is not used for this season as the first edition of the UEFA Europa Conference League has not been held.
Association ranking
For the 2021–22 UEFA Europa League, the associations are allocated places according to their 2020 UEFA country coefficients, which takes into account their performance in European competitions from 2015–16 to 2019–20.[4]
Apart from the allocation based on the country coefficients, associations may have additional teams participating in the Europa League, as noted below:
- (UCL) – Additional teams transferred from the UEFA Champions League
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Distribution
The following is the access list for this season.[5]
| Teams entering in this round | Teams advancing from previous round | Teams transferred from Champions League | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Third qualifying round | Champions Path (10 teams) |
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| Main Path (4 teams) |
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| Play-off round (20 teams) |
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| Group stage (32 teams) |
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| Preliminary knockout round (16 teams) |
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| Knockout phase (16 teams) |
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In the default access list, the title holders of the UEFA Europa Conference League qualify for the group stage. However, since this berth is not used for this season, the following changes to the access list are made:
- The cup winners of association 7 (Russia) enter the group stage instead of the play-off round.
- The cup winners of associations 13 (Denmark) and 14 (Scotland) enter the play-off round instead of the third qualifying round.
Changes will be made to the access list above, if any of the teams that qualify for the Europa League via their domestic competitions also qualify for the Champions League as the Champions League or Europa League title holders, or if there are fewer teams transferred from the Champions League due to changes in the Champions League access list. In any case where a spot in the Europa League is vacated, teams of the highest-ranked associations in earlier rounds will be promoted accordingly.
Teams
The labels in the parentheses show how each team qualified for the place of its starting round:
- CW: Cup winners
- 4th, 5th, etc.: League position of the previous season
- UCL: Transferred from the Champions League
- GS: Third-placed teams from the group stage
- CH/LP PO: Losers from the play-off round (Champions/League Path)
- CH/LP Q3: Losers from the third qualifying round (Champions/League Path)
- CH/LP Q2: Losers from the second qualifying round (Champions/League Path)
The third qualifying round is divided into Champions Path (CH) and Main Path (MP).
| Entry round | Teams | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Knockout round play-offs |  (UCL GS) |
(UCL GS) |
(UCL GS) |
(UCL GS) | |
| (UCL GS) |
(UCL GS) |
(UCL GS) |
(UCL GS) | ||
| Group stage |  (CW) |
(5th) |
 (CW) |
(5th) | |
 (CW) |
(5th) |
 (CW) |
(5th) | ||
 (CW) |
(4th) |
 (CW) |
 (CW) | ||
| (UCL CH PO) |
(UCL CH PO) |
(UCL CH PO) |
(UCL CH PO) | ||
| (UCL LP PO) |
(UCL LP PO) |
(UCL LP Q3) |
(UCL LP Q3) | ||
| (UCL LP Q3) |
(UCL LP Q3) |
||||
| Play-off round | .svg.png.webp){kind=small} (CW) |
 (CW) |
 (CW) |
 (CW) | |
 (CW) |
 (CW) |
 (CW) |
(UCL CH Q3) | ||
| (UCL CH Q3) |
(UCL CH Q3) |
(UCL CH Q3) |
(UCL CH Q3) | ||
| (UCL CH Q3) |
|||||
| Third qualifying round | CH | (UCL CH Q2) |
(UCL CH Q2) |
(UCL CH Q2) |
(UCL CH Q2) |
| (UCL CH Q2) |
(UCL CH Q2) |
(UCL CH Q2) |
(UCL CH Q2) | ||
| (UCL CH Q2) |
(UCL CH Q2) |
||||
| MP |  (CW) |
(UCL LP Q2) |
(UCL LP Q2) |
(UCL LP Q2) | |
Schedule
The schedule of the competition is as follows (all draws are held at the UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland, unless stated otherwise).[6] Matches are scheduled for Thursdays, though exceptionally can take place on Tuesdays or Wednesdays due to scheduling conflicts. Scheduled kick-off times are 16:30 (for a limited number of matches), 18:45 (instead of 18:55 previously) and 21:00 CEST/CET.[7]
| Phase | Round | Draw date | First leg | Second leg |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qualifying | Third qualifying round | TBD | 5 August 2021 | 12 August 2021 |
| Play-offs | TBD | 19 August 2021 | 26 August 2021 | |
| Group stage | Matchday 1 | TBD | 16 September 2021 | |
| Matchday 2 | 30 September 2021 | |||
| Matchday 3 | 21 October 2021 | |||
| Matchday 4 | 4 November 2021 | |||
| Matchday 5 | 25 November 2021 | |||
| Matchday 6 | 9 December 2021 | |||
| Knockout phase | Knockout round play-offs | TBD | 17 February 2022 | 24 February 2022 |
| Round of 16 | TBD | 10 March 2022 | 17 March 2022 | |
| Quarter-finals | TBD | 7 April 2022 | 14 April 2022 | |
| Semi-finals | 28 April 2022 | 5 May 2022 | ||
| Final | 18 May 2022 at Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán, Seville | |||
See also
References
- "UEFA competitions to resume in August". UEFA.com. Union of European Football Associations. 17 June 2020. Retrieved 17 June 2020.
- "Budapest to host 2022 UEFA Europa League Final". UEFA.com. Union of European Football Associations. 2 March 2020. Retrieved 2 March 2020.
- "UEFA Executive Committee approves new club competition". UEFA.com. Union of European Football Associations. 2 December 2018. Retrieved 2 December 2018.
- "Country coefficients 2019/20". UEFA.com. Union of European Football Associations. 2020. Retrieved 16 February 2020.
- "Access list 2021–24" (PDF). UEFA.com. Union of European Football Associations. Retrieved 16 February 2020.
- "2021/22 UEFA Europa League: all you need to know". UEFA. 19 January 2021. Retrieved 19 January 2021.
- "Format change for 2020/21 UEFA Nations League". UEFA.com. Union of European Football Associations. 24 September 2019.