UEFA Women's Champions League

A preliminary round was played to reduce teams to 32. Starting in the second season, this grouped teams into mini-tournaments of four teams, whose winners advanced to the group stage.

The group stage was eight groups of four, whose winners advanced to the quarter-finals. The knock-out rounds were played as two-legged matches.

For the 2004–05 season the group stage was played in four groups of eight, with the top two teams advancing to the quarter-finals.

On 11 December 2008, UEFA announced that the competition would be reformatted and renamed to the UEFA Women's Champions League.[2] As in the men's game, the new tournament aimed to include runners-up of the top women's football leagues in Europe.[3]

The competition was opened to the champions of all 55 UEFA associations that had a qualifying women's league. Due to the varying participation, the number of teams playing the qualifying round changed from year to year.[4] Numbers were based on three principles:

• Qualifying rounds are contested by groups of 4 teams.
• Group winners, plus the smallest possible number of runners-up, qualify for the Round of 32.

When the new format was initially announced, the eight top countries according to the UEFA league coefficient were awarded two places in the league,[3] with runners-up participating in the qualifying rounds.

For the 2011–12 tournament, the runners-up from the top eight nations instead qualified directly to the R32. For the five years under this format, seven nations remained in the top eight: Germany, Sweden, England (both iterations), France, Denmark, Russia, and Italy. A different nation provided the eighth runner-up in each of the five years: Iceland, Norway, Austria, Czech Republic,[5] and Spain[6] in that order.

The tournament was expanded for the 2016–17 season, with the runners-up from nations 9–12 in UEFA league coefficient also qualifying. For the first three years under this format, the four nations in these slots were Czech Republic, Austria, Scotland, and Norway. For the 2019–20 season, Switzerland replaced Norway, and for the final season under this format, Norway, Kazakhstan, and The Netherlands replaced Russia, Scotland, and Austria in the top 12.

On 4 December 2019, a new format was announced for the 2021–22 season.[7] The top six associations entered three teams, associations ranked 7–16 entered two, and the remaining associations entered one. The competition is restructured to appear more similar to the men's CL format, with a double-round-robin group stage, and two paths (a champions path and a non-champions path) for teams that do not automatically qualify for the group stage. UEFA also centralized the media rights from the group stage onward.[8]

• Qualification takes place in two rounds: a First round of four-team mini-tournaments, and a Second round of two-legged matches. Each of these rounds is split into two simultaneous paths based on how teams qualified.
  • The Champions path consists of the champions from the top 50 associations. 7 teams advance.
  • The League path consists of the runners-up from the top 16 associations. 5 teams advance.
• The Group stage includes four teams qualifying directly: the defending UWCL champions and the champions from the top 3 associations. It is played in four groups of four, each advancing two teams to two-legged quarterfinals.

Nation	Winners	Runners-up	Semi-finalists	Winner	Runners-up	Semi-finalists
Germany	9	8	10	Frankfurt (4) Turbine Potsdam (2) VfL Wolfsburg (2) Duisburg (1)	VfL Wolfsburg (4) Frankfurt (2) Turbine Potsdam (2)	Frankfurt (2) Turbine Potsdam (2) Duisburg (2) Bayern Munich (2) VfL Wolfsburg (2)
France	8	4	9	Lyon (8)	Lyon (2) Paris Saint-Germain (2)	Paris Saint-Germain (4) Lyon (2) Toulouse (1) Montpellier (1) Paris FC (1)
Sweden	2	5	4	Umeå (2)	Umeå (3) Djurgården (1) Tyresö (1)	Umeå (2) Djurgården (1) Malmö (1)
Spain	2	2	2	Barcelona (2)	Barcelona (2)	Barcelona (2)
England	1	1	12	Arsenal (1)	Chelsea (1)	Arsenal (6) Chelsea (3) Manchester City (2) Birmingham City (1)
Denmark	0	1	3		Fortuna Hjørring (1)	Brøndby (3)
Russia	0	1	0		Zvezda Perm (1)
Norway	0	0	2			Trondheims-Ørn (1) Kolbotn (1)
Finland	0	0	1			HJK (1)
Italy	0	0	1			Bardolino Verona (1)

Since the format change in 2009, no team from a nation outside the top two has won the title, except for Barcelona in 2021. The only teams from nations outside the top two to have finished runner-up in that time were Tyresö in 2014, Barcelona in 2019 and Chelsea in 2021.

Also, no team from a nation outside the top four made the semi-finals until Brøndby in 2015. Barcelona has since made the semi-finals in 2017, 2019, 2020 and 2021 (and they went on to win the title in 2021).

The top-scorer award is given to the player who scores the most goals in the competition. Up until the introduction of the Champions League Group Stage it included the qualifying rounds. Since 2021–22 only goals from the group stage onwards count towards the award. Iceland's Margrét Lára Vidarsdóttir has won the award three times. Ada Hegerberg holds the record for most goals in a season.

As of 21 May 2022[23] Bold players still active.

Rank	Topscorer	Goals	Clubs
1	Ada Hegerberg	59	Stabæk, 1. FFC Turbine Potsdam, Olympique Lyon
2	Anja Mittag	51	1. FFC Turbine Potsdam, FC Rosengård, Paris Saint-Germain, Wolfsburg, FC Rosengård
3	Conny Pohlers	48	1. FFC Turbine Potsdam, 1. FFC Frankfurt, Wolfsburg
4	Eugénie Le Sommer	47	Olympique Lyon
5	Marta	46	Umeå IK, Tyresö FF, FC Rosengård
6	Camille Abily	43	Montpellier, Olympique Lyon
7	Lotta Schelin	42	Olympique Lyon, FC Rosengård
7	Kim Little	42	Hibernian, Arsenal
8	Nina Burger	40	SV Neulengbach
10	Hanna Ljungberg	39	Umeå IK

DAZN have the global rights of the competition from 2021–22 until 2024–25, 61 matches in both 2021–22 and 2022–23 seasons were live streamed for free on the DAZN UEFA Women's Champions League YouTube channel.[24]

All matches from group stage until final will be aired live on beIN Sports until 2023–24 season.

ATA Football agreed a new partnership with DAZN which saw the subscribers get access of 31 live matches from the tournament throughout the 2021–22 season. Those games were also available to rewatch on the platform, as well as live on DAZN and its YouTube channel.[25]