Champions League


 * For the historical international club competition, see Champions League (pre-UICA).

The IFCF Champions League is the world championship for club football organized by the International Federation of Club Football. The champion of each participating national association, plus additional teams from the highest-ranked associations in the IFCF ranking, may enter the competition each season.

It is the successor competition to the UICA Champions’ Cup, adopting its competition rules and coefficient ranking system. The first edition of the IFCF Champions League was held in what would have been UICA's 75th edition. Due to uncertainty over the fate of UICA and delays in organizing the 74th Champions' Cup, ad-hoc international tournaments like the Dwile Invitational took the place of the 74th UICA season.

Format
The tournament consists of a knockout qualifying phase leading to a 32-team group stage, followed by a 16-team knockout phase. Teams eliminated prior to the group stage, and the third-placed teams from the group stage, enter the Challengers Cup. Knockout ties are played in two matches with each team at home for one match, with the result determined by the aggregate score. Ties in aggregate are broken by which team scored more goals as the away team, by extra time, and finally by penalty shootout if there is still no winner. The exception is the final, which is played as a single match at a neutral venue chosen prior to the start of the tournament.

Qualifying phase
The qualifying phase consists of a preliminary round if necessary, three qualifying rounds, and a playoff round, with winners in the playoff round advancing to the group stage. Teams are granted byes according to coefficient ranking among the entered teams, hence higher-ranked teams will generally have to play fewer rounds. In addition, teams which enter as their association's champion play in a separate Champions Path from teams that qualified through league position who play in the League Path. As only clubs from the top 32 associations would enter the League Path, it is common to see unusually high-profile matches at this stage. Losing teams in the qualifying phase enter the subsequent round of the Challengers Cup.

The current naming scheme was adopted from the 10th cycle; prior to this "qualifying" rounds were known as preliminary rounds with the final two rounds called the qualifying round and playoff round respectively.

Group stage and knockout phase
The 32 teams entering the group stage are draw into groups of four. The defending champions of the Champions League and Challengers Cup, the league champions of the four top-ranked associations, and the runners-up of the three top-ranked associations, qualify automatically for the group stage. They are joined by the winners of the play-off round. The group stage is a round-robin where each team plays the other teams in their group once at home and once away.

The top two teams of each group enter the knockout phase. For the Round of 16, group winners are drawn to play against runners-up, and teams representing the same association or which were in the same group cannot play against each other. From the quarter-finals onwards, these provisions no longer apply. Third-place teams enter the Challengers Cup Round of 32.