A top-four finish has been the target for Premier League clubs for so long, it’s been hard to adjust to a world where coming fifth in English football’s top flight can get you into European football’s blue-riband event.
But that’s what happened last season, with Newcastle United the beneficiaries, edging out Aston Villa on the final day. So, as we head into a decisive week in this season’s editions of both the Champions League and Europa League, with plenty of coefficient points up for grabs in the final rounds of league-phase action, how is the Premier League placed right now when it comes to securing a bonus place in the 2026-27 competition?
The Athletic breaks down the situation.
Maybe it’s the complicated scoring system, or the rules — which run to hundreds of clauses and sub-clauses. Whatever it is, UEFA’s spreadsheet of three-decimal numbers and probabilities doesn’t make the most riveting reading for football fans.
But the cold, hard maths is important, as it not only dictates which clubs enter which European competition at which stage, but also which of the continent’s major domestic leagues is granted an extra spot for Champions League qualification that season.
The logic is simple. Ish.
For each game where a club avoid defeat in a UEFA competition — from the Champions League to the Europa League and Conference League — they accrue points; two for a win, one for a draw.
Teams can also earn points for every round that they progress, but more of these are on offer in the Champions League. For example, the team that finishes top of the Champions League group phase will earn 12 points, double that on offer for doing the same in the Europa League and three times that of topping the Conference League standings.
Those scores are tallied across the past five seasons to determine the ‘strongest’ and ‘weakest’ sides in the tournament, which helps to balance the draws before the competition begins.
That’s not where the fun ends. With the recent expansion of the Champions League from 32 teams to 36, there are additional qualifying places to hand out, and those go to the best-performing countries based on the same criteria.
Each national association accumulates points as their teams progress through the various continental competitions. At the end, that cumulative score will be divided by the number of teams that represented the country concerned, to give an average ranking score. The two nations with the highest average will be awarded those precious additional spots.
The Premier League failed to be among the top two in 2023-24, but managed it comfortably in 2024-25, with last season’s top five all playing in the 2025-26 Champions League, plus Europa League winners Tottenham Hotspur making it six of the 36 teams, having qualified via that competition.
Premier League sides have cruised through this season’s Champions League, with the six teams all in the table’s top 11 after seven of the eight league-phase matchdays (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)
So, you may be wondering, which countries are in pole position this season?
Well, unsurprisingly, England is currently in the lead.
With nine teams currently active in UEFA competitions — from Arsenal, who have won all seven of their Champions League games, to Aston Villa, with six victories in the Europa League — the Premier League has strong representation throughout the three tournaments, with a combined 40 wins and eight draws so far.
As many of those teams are likely progress to later phases — with all six in contention in the Champions League alone — England is almost certain to rack up enough points to finish comfortably within the top two again, and earn a fifth Champions League qualification place next season, even if they do have to divide that total by nine.
You might have seen that coming, but how about this: the Polish Ekstraklasa currently sits behind England in second place.
That’s because all four of Poland’s representatives — Rakow Czestochowa, Jagiellonia Bialystok, Lech Poznan and Legia Warsaw — were involved in lengthy pre-tournament qualifying campaigns, where they were able to collect coefficient points for wins and draws, albeit at half the usual rate. In addition to those 17 qualifying wins and five qualifying draws, Rakow are going strong in the Conference League, finishing second overall in its six-round league phase, four points ahead of Lech and five clear of Jagiellonia.
The nature of the scoring system means that as soon as Champions League teams from nations such as Spain, Italy and Germany progress to the knockout phase following this week’s final round of league-phase fixtures, those nations are likely to displace Poland, due to the additional points given to success in that competition. But as it stands, an extra Champions League spot is heading to an unlikely nation.
Jagiellonia Bialystok’s players celebrate a goal against Strasbourg in the UEFA Conference League (Frederick Florin/AFP via Getty Images)
So, with England’s fifth Champions League spot all but confirmed, where might the other bonus spot be heading?
Using their team-strength model to predict the outcome of games, Opta looks at the likelihood of each club to earn points from wins, draws and progressions until the end of the season, estimating an expected points return once their total has been divided by the number of sides competing in Europe for that association.
As we can see below, England’s forecasted average of 28.0 points per team is enough to give it close to a 100 per cent chance of finishing in the top two, while Poland has just a 0.5 per cent chance of holding onto its current standing. Instead, the fight for second becomes a three-horse race between Germany, Italy and Spain.
All of which makes for another fascinating subplot to keep an eye on come Wednesday evening and, to a lesser extent, Thursday.
Spain will definitely lose Villarreal from contention this week (their record of one win from seven Champions League games so far is particularly woeful), with Athletic Club also in danger of missing the knockout rounds. Similarly, Germany has Eintracht Frankfurt eliminated and Bayer Leverkusen in difficulty, while Italy has Serie A champions Napoli at risk of not finishing in the top 24.
But England has no such worries.
Which is why half the Premier League, probably as far down as Bournemouth in 13th (but seven points off Chelsea in fifth), can confidently target a top-five finish, knowing that will mean entry into next season’s Champions League.
