Crystal Palace have been demoted from the Europa League and will play in the Conference League in the 2025/26 season, UEFA have confirmed.
Palace, who qualified for the Europa League following their historic FA Cup victory over Manchester City in May, have been punished by the governing body in response to a breach of multi-club ownership rules.
Clubs with the same owner are barred from competing in the same UEFA competition if an individual or ownership group is considered to have a decisive influence over both teams.
Palace's largest shareholder John Textor is also the owner of Lyon, and despite the American businessman agreeing a deal to sell his Palace shares to the US billionaire Woody Johnson, the move fell outside UEFA's 1st March deadline.
Lyon qualified for the Europa League by finishing sixth in Ligue 1 and, as a consequence of the multi-club ownership issues not being resolved prior to UEFA's deadline and Lyon receiving precedence for their higher league position, Palace have paid the price.
The demotion of the Eagles means Nottingham Forest, who finished seventh in the Premier League last season, will replace them in the Europa League.
Palace are expected to appeal the ruling, with a statement from UEFA reading: "The present decision may be appealed against before the Court of Arbitration for Sport, in accordance with Articles 62 and 63 of the UEFA Statutes."
Anticipation of Palace's ban from the competition heightened after Lyon won their appeal against relegation to Ligue 2 this week, clearing them to participate in the Europa League.
Had Lyon's relegation been upheld, a deal had been agreed with UEFA to exclude them from the Europa League, paving the way for Palace to feature.
Textor has persistently argued that he doesn’t have decisive influence in Palace and the 59-year-old, who also owns Brazilian outfit Botafogo, pled with UEFA officials in a meeting at their headquarters in Nyon.
He told talkSPORT: “I’ll admit to not even thinking about the issue, of course I have to. But the rule’s very clear: if you have decisive influence, you may need to consider this, but I don’t, I didn’t. If I had decisive influence, I would have been trying to sell the club.
“When I got into it, I was so sure it’d be so long before Palace was in this situation, the evolution of the rules is happening very quickly – UEFA is trying to address this, so many clubs are owned by multi-clubs, I honestly thought they’d fix it before I had a problem."
