2025/26 Europa League calendar – Key dates – LaLiga Expert

The 2025/26 UEFA Europa League calendar spans more than 10 months from the opening qualifiers in July, through to the final in Istanbul in May 2026. It will follow the same format as last season’s competition, including a 36-team league phase prior to the knockout rounds.

Spanish representation comes via Real Betis and Celta Vigo who have qualified for Europe for the first time in nine years. They both advance directly into the league phase where they’ll face competition from the likes of Aston Villa, Roma, Porto and Lyon.

2025/26 UEFA Europa League dates

10th July 2025 – Europa League qualifying starts

The first Europa League games of the new season start in July with the first qualifying round which will feature a few genuine minnows, but also the likes of Shakhtar Donetsk and Legia Warsaw who are regulars on the European stage.

There’ll be two more qualifying rounds played in July and August, with the latter of those also featuring a number of teams knocked out in Champions League qualifying. The winners in the third qualifying round will advance to the play-off round.

21st-28th August 2025 – Play-off round

There’ll be some big UEFA Europa League fixtures in late August, with 12 two-legged play-off ties determining who progresses into the league phase. We already know the identities of some of the clubs that will take part in this round, with Young Boys, Genk and Aberdeen among them.

The play-off round will also feature a few more Champions League drop-outs, with clubs seeded in the draw according to their UEFA coefficients. The losers of the 12 ties will drop into the league phase of the Conference League.

29th August 2025 – League phase draw

By the conclusion of the second legs of the play-off ties on Thursday 28th August, we’ll finally know the identity of the 36 clubs taking part in the competition proper.

The following day, the league phase draw will be made. Teams will be evenly divided between four seeded pots and a computer will determine who plays who, with every club set to play eight fixtures against eight different teams, two from each pot.

European regulars Betis will be drawn in pot one, while Celta are likely to be in pot three or four.

24th-25th September 2025 – League phase begins

The league phase of the Europa League starts a week after the league phase of the 2025/26 Champions League. The opening games will be spread across Wednesday 24th and Thursday 25th September, but the rest of the fixtures will all take place on Thursday nights.

The UEL schedule will see each side play six matches before the end of 2025, before a brief pause around the festive period. The league phase action then concludes with matchdays seven and eight taking place in successive weeks in late January.

29th January 2026 – League phase final matchday

Thursday 29th January is a big date for the diaries of fans of Europa League clubs as it will see all 36 teams in action at the same time. By full-time across the 18 matches, we will know the final standings in the league phase which will go a long way to determining how the rest of the competition takes shape.

The stronger teams will be targeting a place in the top eight which would mean direct passage into the round-of-16. They’ll also want to finish as high as possible in order to boost their chances of a more favourable knockout path, and three of the top four in last season’s competition did progress all the way to the semi-finals.

The teams that finish between 9th and 24th will remain in the competition, but will need to win a knockout round play-off tie to advance, while those that finish outside the top 24 will be eliminated from Europe altogether, with the new format no longer seeing clubs move between competitions after the group/league phase.

30th January 2026 – Knockout phase play-offs draw

The Europa League draw for the knockout phase play-offs will see the teams that finish between 9th and 16th given home draws for the second leg, while the teams that finish between 17th and 24th will be at home first.

Supporters will already know which two clubs their team could potentially face before the draw is made, as it’s partially determined by the Europa league standings in the previous phase. For example, teams that finish 9th or 10th will know that they’ll be up against either the 23rd or 24th place finishers.

19th-26th February 2026 – Knockout phase play-offs

There’s no country protection from this point onwards, so it’s possible that we could get two teams from the same country facing off at this point, so Celta could in theory face Betis at this stage, or in any of the latter rounds.

Roma and Porto met at this stage last season, although some of Europe’s lesser sides are also likely to feature, and we saw Real Sociedad cruise past Midtjylland of Denmark at this point in the 2024/25 competition, the first to feature the new format for the Europa League.

27th February 2026 – Knockout phase draw

Another of the Europa League key dates for the upcoming campaign is Friday 27th February 2026 when the knockout phase draws takes place. Primarily, this will determine the eight round-of-16 ties which will see the top eight from the league phase drawn to play away in the first legs against the eight winners of the knockout phase play-off ties.

However, this will also set up the entire bracket for the rest of the competition, with no more draws necessary after this point. UEFA will also determine which clubs will play at home first in the quarter-finals and semi-finals, so it’ll be possible for fans of the remaining 16 teams to fully plot their potential path to Istanbul.

12th-19th March 2026 – Round-of-16

The round-of-16 ties will be played in March, with both the first and second legs scheduled to take place on successive Thursday nights. The only likely change to this may be if two clubs from the same city are scheduled to play at home in the Europa or Conference League on the same night, in which case one game may be brought forward by a day or two.

Manuel Pellegrini will certainly be hoping that Real Betis’ Europa League schedule features a round-of-16 tie, although they did come unstuck at this stage in the UEL against Eintracht Frankfurt in 2021/22 and Manchester United in 2022/23.

9th-16th April 2026 – Quarter-finals

There’ll be eight remaining UEFA Europa League teams by April, with the two legs of the quarter-finals taking place in successive weeks.

Last season’s competition served up two epic ties at this stage, with Norwegians Bodo/Glimt stunning Lazio on penalties in Rome, while Manchester United produced a brilliant late comeback at Old Trafford to seal a 7-6 aggregate win over Lyon in extra time.

30th April – 7th May 2026 – Semi-finals

We’ll be heading firmly into the business end of the competition by late April, with the two legs of the semi-finals taking place on Thursday 30th April and Thursday 7th May.

Celta Vigo’s Europa League schedule took them all the way to this stage when they last featured in the competition in 2016/17, and they were only narrowly defeated by Man Utd. Claudio Giraldez will be hoping the 2025/26 Europa League features many memorable Balaidos nights for his side, but they’ll have their work cut out to make it this far again.

20th May 2026 – Europa League final in Istanbul

The Europa League winners will be crowned on Wednesday 20th May 2026, with the final taking place in Istanbul at the Besiktas stadium, a 42,590-capacity arena that opened its doors in 2016.

Besiktas are in the competition and will enter in the second qualifying round, so the Turkish club are harbouring similar dreams to those of Athletic Club who narrowly missed out on a dream home stadium final last season.

Last season’s finalists received ticket allocations of 14,770 for the match at San Mames, although that may be slightly reduced in 2026 given the smaller capacity of the Besiktas stadium.

Full ticketing details for the match will be announced in due course via UEFA, with a significant number of tickets likely to fall into the corporate or neutral sections. Fans may have some luck finding tickets on resale websites such as Hellotickets, although any purchases made via third-party sites are done at your own risk.