UEFA has announced that a new women’s club competition, the Women’s Europa Cup, will kick off in the 2025/26 season.

The Europa Cup will have some slight similarities to the men’s UEFA Europa League, serving as a second continental competition for clubs in Europe to participate in. Rather than a group stage, the new tournament will go straight to knockouts – two qualifying rounds, a round of 16, quarter-finals, semi-finals and a two-legged final.

With no room for mistakes and a purely knockout format, the Europa Cup is already looking like one of the most exciting competitions in women’s football. 

13 teams will be directly entered into the Cup – second and third-placed teams depending on their league’s ranking. Some clubs that face an early exit in the UWCL qualifiers will also be given a chance at redemption in the Europa Cup through a 'feeding' system.

The new competition was first announced last year, alongside minor changes to the Women’s Champions League. With the UWCL adopting the same league phase format as the men’s competition and a slight expansion to 18 teams rather than 16, the continental landscape in Europe is only getting better. 

Many have voiced concerns about the current format of the UWCL, from fans wishing to see their favourite players on Europe's biggest stage to managers criticising the difficult route to qualification. There have been calls for UEFA to expand the competition to 32 teams, giving more sides a chance to compete whilst raising the profile of lesser known teams from smaller leagues.

A big Champions League expansion isn’t in the works just yet, but the introduction of a new tournament shows that European women’s football is on its way up. 

More and more teams have proven they are ready to compete at the same level as the likes of Lyon, Barcelona and Chelsea, but the restrictive nature of the UWCL only makes space for the same big clubs every season. The Women’s Europa Cup is here to change that.

That first-ever UEFA Women’s Super Cup is going to be a movie.

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