The New Format and Full Schedule for the 2025/2026 UEFA Champions League: Who Will Win?

Liputan6.com, Jakarta Europe's most prestigious football competition, the UEFA Champions League (UCL), returns with a revolutionary new format starting in the 2024/2025 season and continuing into the 2025/2026 season.

The 2025/2026 UEFA Champions League season is scheduled to begin on Tuesday, September 16, 2025, with a series of opening matches featuring fierce duels between top European clubs.

In fact, several football experts have made predictions about the contestants who are most likely to win this prestigious European tournament.

While it's too early to make definitive predictions, several major European teams have been identified as the main contenders for the 2025/2026 UEFA Champions League title.

BBC Sport's expert pundits, commentators and journalists give their thought about who will lift the trophy in Hungary, as well as who will go furthest out of Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Newcastle United and Tottenham Hotspur.

Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) will be looking to defend their title after winning their first Champions League title the previous season.

Teams such as Manchester City, Real Madrid, FC Barcelona, ​​Liverpool, and Bayern Munich are consistently considered strong contenders.

BBC's chief football writer Phil McNulty: "My pick to win it are Liverpool, purely on the basis of the huge strengthening they have carried out this summer. Florian Wirtz and Alexander Isak are two high-class players who are Champions League-ready."

Former Germany midfielder Thomas Hitzlsperger: "Real are usually the club with the strongest mentality in this competition, but PSG have to be one of the favourites and Liverpool are too, given that they had such a good Premier League season then invested so much in their squad."

Former England captain Steph Houghton: "I am backing PSG to win it again. They are a young squad that has experienced winning already, plus they are athletic and forward thinking."

Starting in the 2024/2025 season, the UEFA Champions League officially abandoned its traditional group stage format of eight groups of four teams.

Instead, the competition adopted a single league format involving 36 teams, up from the previous 32.

In this new format, each team will play eight matches in the league stage, with four home and four away matches, against eight different opponents.

All 36 teams will be ranked in a single league table, creating tighter competition from the outset.The top eight teams in the final league stage will advance directly to the round of 16.

Meanwhile, the teams finishing 9th to 24th will compete in a two-legged playoff for the remaining eight places in the round of 16.

Teams finishing 25th or lower will be automatically eliminated from all European competitions.

The 2025/2026 UEFA Champions League season will open with the league stage, which will run from September 16, 2025, to January 28, 2026.

The league stage draw will be held on August 28, 2025, at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco.The first matchday, September 16–18, 2025, will immediately feature a number of exciting matches.

These include Juventus vs. Dortmund, Liverpool vs. Atletico Madrid, Bayern Munich vs. Chelsea, Manchester City vs. Napoli, and Real Madrid vs. Marseille.

The knockout stage will begin with the play-off draw on January 30, 2026, followed by the play-off matches in February.

The 2026 UEFA Champions League final is scheduled for May 30, 2026, at the Puskás Arena in Budapest, Hungary.

Tuesday ✅Wednesday ✅Thursday ✅The Champions League is back 🙌#UCL pic.twitter.com/GR1GIJ45en

— UEFA Champions League (@ChampionsLeague) September 15, 2025