Created by independent journalist Steve Menary, the UEC's UCL Diversity Index provides an overview of the state of competitive balance at the top of the European football pyramid
The number of new clubs making their debut in the modern UEFA Champions League in 2025/26 has dropped to just two just a season after the competition’s group stage was expanded to include 36 teams.
The number of new clubs making their UCL debut in 2025/26 (qualifying rounds included) has plummeted to its lowest level in at least 14 years as diversity in the UCL continues decrease according to the UEC’s Champions League Diversity Index.
The index works by dividing the total UCL appearances for each nation by the number of different clubs that took up those entries to give a national figure. The higher the index score, the lower the diversity.
With so few new clubs entering the tournament, the top level of the index remains unchanged with Greece’s negative index rating growing.
Olympiacos won the 2023/24 UEFA Europa League, which improved UEFA’s coefficient rating for Greece and the country have two places in the next UCL. However, the same four Greek clubs have shared the 58 Champions League spots – and the significant UEFA funding that goes with that place – to be allocated to Greece since 1994/95, when structural changes to the competition began to pave the way for the modern Champions League.
The 2024/25 Champions League final between Paris Saint-Germain and Internationale was the first in 21 years not to feature any club from Spain, England or Germany, but a European Super League is rapidly materialising.
Since Porto of Portugal beat France’s AS Monaco in 2004, the 42 subsequent finalists have come from England (15), Spain (12), Italy (7), Germany (6) and France (2). The 21 winners since Porto’s triumph have come from Spain (10), England (6), Italy (2), Germany (2) and France (1).
Spain’s La Liga has been awarded the most places in Europe’s flagship club tournament with 119 places shared by 13 clubs. The greatest number of different clubs to take part comes from Germany, where 16 teams have taken up 103 UCL slots.
In the 2025/26 UCL, 19 of the 36 spaces in the ‘Swiss style’ league format will come from England, Spain, Italy and Germany and will be the first to feature more than five teams from one country.
England have been allocated six slots after Tottenham Hotspur won the last Europa League, but the club still earned less money that 25 of the 36 clubs to play in the UCL group stage in 2024/25. The worst UCL group stage performers, Slovan Bratislava, won nearly the same amount of money as Conference League winners Chelsea according to estimates by Swiss Ramble.
The UCL was expanded in 2024/25 with four extra places made available in the restructured group stage. In the same season, four clubs also made their debut in the modern competition, Aston Villa from England, Spain’s Girona, Bologna from Italy and Brest from France, all the money-spinning group stage. All four clubs did not have to go through qualifying rounds due to UEFA’s coefficient that benefits larger leagues, and Aston Villa will get around €84m, Brest will pocket €52m, Girona €33m and Bologna €32m.
No club making their debut in the UCL via qualifying rounds has been able to qualify for the group stages since 2016/17, when this feat was achieved by Rostov from Russia, whose clubs have been banned from the UCL since 2022/23 due to their country’s invasion of Ukraine.
UEFA is distributing money to a wider range of clubs, but the Diversity Index suggests this appears to be helping finance domestic hegemonies across Europe. Clubs eliminated in the UCL qualifiers then drop into lower tier UEFA competitions, such as the new Conference League, and this prize money helps reinforce domestic strangleholds.
In the qualifying period for the 2025/26, the title was won by 23 of 53 UEFA members able to enter clubs in the UCL – the same number of repeat winners as the previous season.
Bulgaria’s PFC Ludogorets Razgrad have now won 14 consecutive titles.
Some hegemonies were broken last season. In Finland, KuPS ended a four-year run of title wins by HJK Helsinki, while Shakhtar Donetsk were denied a fourth successive title in Ukraine by arch-rivals Dinamo Kyiv, but only four different Ukrainian clubs featured in the UCL since 1994/95, making the country the second least diverse behind Greece.
Elsewhere, in Azerbaijan Qarabag won a fourth successive Premier League title and their eleventh since 2014, while 2024/25 Champions League winners have won seven out of the last eight Ligue 1 titles.
Even where long-running title wins have been broken, there is often a swift return to normal service. There was a new winner in Lithuania, but the 2024 title win by Žalgiris was the club’s fourth in five years, while Linfield ended Larne’s two-year run of wins and by taking the Northern Irish Premiership for the sixth time in the last nine years.
In countries that score at the lower end of the Diversity Index, there are also signs of new hegemonies emerging that is contributing to the lack of diversity among new clubs in the UCL. In Sweden, Malmo has won four out of the last five Allsvenskan championships and RFS has won three out of four Virslīga titles in Latvia.
The two clubs making their UCL debut in 2025/26 are not long-established teams that have been seeking to break their domestic status quo for many years, but sides that are only a decade old.
Cypriot champions Pafos was formed in 2014 from a merger of two local clubs, AEP Paphos and AEK Kouklia. Backed by Russian émigré Roman Dubov, the club has invested heavily in players and won the Cypriot Cup in 2024 and went on to qualify for the UEFA Conference League in 2024/25 and win their first league title.
FC Noah is based in Armavir and was founded in 2017 as FC Artsakh. Two years later, the club was rebranded as FC Noah and in 2023 was sold to Vardges Vardanyan, president of the Armenian-based Digitain gambling empire. Like Pafos, Noah qualified for the UEFA Conference League group stages in 2024/25 and won the league and cup double in Armenia.
Both clubs look unlikely to emulate Rostov and reach the group stages but once eliminated, each side will benefit from a second chance at playing in the group’s stages in one of UEFA’s other two competitions, where more prize money will be paid out to help reinforce their ability to reclaim their respective domestic titles.
