Football

UEFA Women's Champions League: Dates, teams, history & more

Ellis Statham Updated: 27 Sep 24 15:13

The UEFA Women's Champions League, the blue riband club event in European football, is currently in its 25th season.

Since the first running of the tournament, then called the UEFA Women's Cup, back in 2001/02, only eight different sides from five different countries have managed to put their names on the trophy.

French powers Lyon have won the tournament a record eight times while Barcelona are the defending champions having won the competition in the 2023/24 season.

UEFA Women's Champions League dates for 2024/25

Group stage dates

Matchday 1: 8/9 October
Matchday 2: 16/17 October
Matchday 3: 12/13 November
Matchday 4: 20/21 November
Matchday 5: 11/12 December
Matchday 6: 17/18 December

Knockout calendar

Quarter-finals
First leg: 18/19 March
Second leg: 26/27 March

Semi-finals
First leg: 19/20 April
Second leg: 26/27 April

Final (Estadio Jose Alvalade, Lisbon)
23, 24 or 25 May (tbc)

UEFA Women's Champions League format

The format to the UEFA Women's Champions League has constantly been tweaked over the years as more sides have got involved.

The 2024/25 Women's Champions League is the fifth straight season under the existing format which involves two rounds of qualifying, resulting in 12 clubs joining the elite quartet of Barcelona, Lyon, Bayern Munich and Chelsea in the group stage.

The group stage features 16 clubs divided into four groups, with fixtures played between October and December, and the top two from each section qualifying for the knockout stage.

UEFA Women's Champions League 2024/25 teams

A total of 68 teams competed in the group stage qualifying rounds of the 2024/25 UEFA Women's Champions League, which included two rounds, with 46 teams in the Champions Path and 22 teams in the League Path.

The six highest-ranked countries - France, Germany, Spain, England, Italy and Sweden - were able to enter three teams, another 10 countries including Scotland could enter two teams and the rest entered only one.

Of the 68 teams only the highest-ranked four - Barcelona, Lyon, Bayern Munich and Chelsea - were spared qualification and were seeded straight into the group stage.

So good is the calibre of women's football around Europe that a couple of the game's big guns – Benfica and Paris Saint-Germain – failed to make it into the group stage.

Other giants, class acts such as Real Madrid and Arsenal, advanced into the group stage after knocking out tough opponents in round two of qualifying.

UEFA Women's Champions League history

The competition was first played in 2001/02 and was known as the UEFA Women's Cup.

Women's club football was only just beginning to stir at the start of the century with just 33 teams from 33 countries taking part.

There was no Barcelona, no Lyon, no Chelsea back in 2001/02 where the qualifiers for the quarter-finals included the likes of Russian outfit Ryazan, Trondheims-Orn from Norway and Finnish club HJK.

FFC Frankfurt were the winners of the inaugural tournament, beating Swedish side Umea 2-0 in front of a crowd of 12,106 at the German club's home ground.

The first major change in the tournament, tapping into the growth of the women's game, came in 2009/10 when it was rebranded the UEFA Women's Champions League, which allowed the runners-up as well as winners of Europe's top leagues to enter and opened its doors to all 55 associations.

Six-time German champions Turbine Potsdam won the title that season, making them one of four German clubs to be crowned queens of Europe. No other country has produced more winning teams.

Lyon won the first of their record eight titles in 2010/11 and for a period were simply invincible, the likes of record scorer Ada Hegerberg leading them to five titles in a row from 2015/16.

From 2021 the competition was given another tweak, this time allowing the top six-ranked countries to enter three teams, up from two.

Barcelona, featuring so many stars of Spain's 2023 World Cup-winning squad, were the last winners, beating Lyon 2-0 in the 2024 final.