Every Team Qualified for the 2025–26 Champions League Knockout Stages

One team booked their place in the knockout rounds after just five league phase fixtures.

Thirty-six teams are chasing Champions League glory. / James Gill/Danehouse/Getty Images

There will be plenty of teams competing in this season’s Champions League who are more than satisfied with simply making it to the league phase.

Kairat Almaty, for instance, can take great pleasure in reaching this round of the competition for the first time in club history—even if their opponents may begrudge having to travel further east than ever before.

Yet for the continental giants, the league phase is nothing more than an inconvenience to be navigated with as little fuss as possible before the real business gets underway in the knockout stage—or rather, that’s how many would like to see it. However, as the likes of Ajax, Benfica and Chelsea have discovered, there are no easy games on the continent.

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As the league phase tilts towards its dizzying climax, when all 18 matches on the eighth and final matchday are played on the same day at the same time, some clubs have already booked their place in the elimination phase.

The top 24 from the 36-team league phase table make it through, with the leading eight advancing immediately to the round of 16. Those placed between ninth and 24th have to first duke it out across a series of two-legged knockout playoffs before being paired with the top eight.

Here’s how things currently stand.

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Every Team Guaranteed to Play in the Champions League Knockout Rounds

Arsenal were the last undefeated team left in the league phase. / Richard Heathcote/Getty Images

Arsenal managed to secure a spot in at least the table’s top 24 after just five matches. The Gunners amassed a perfect start to the competition, failing to even concede a goal before Bayern Munich rocked up at the Emirates in November. Lennart Karl penetrated that previously impregnable rearguard yet Mikel Arteta’s side still ran out as comfortable 3–1 winners.

Without even having to play their sixth match of the league phase, results from the round of fixtures on Tuesday, Dec. 9 ensured that Arsenal could not be caught by clubs from outside the top 24. It wouldn’t take much more to guarantee a top-eight finish, although that has not yet been sealed.

Bayern will also join Arsenal in the knockouts. Vincent Kompany’s Bundesliga champions may have been bitter in the wake of their north London defeat, but they bounced back to earn a 3–1 win over Sporting CP which took them up to 15 points from six games—the same tally they were able to muster across their first eight matches of last season’s Champions League campaign.

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Every Team Qualified for Champions League Round of 16

The Champions League final will unfold on May 30. / Franck Fife/AFP/Getty Images

No side has definitively sealed their place in the round of 16—yet. Should Arsenal defeat Club Brugge and move onto 18 points, they could mathematically seal a top-eight finish depending on other results that night.

Much has been made of how Liverpool proved that finishing top of the league phase table is no guarantee of success—Arne Slot’s side infamously lead the standings before getting dumped out in the last 16.

However, the Reds have also shown that there are other factors behind a demise which extended beyond being beaten by eventual champions Paris Saint-Germain via a penalty shootout. In fact, aside from PSG, last season’s Champions League semifinalists finished inside the league phase table’s top four.

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Every Club Already Eliminated From the Champions League

Ajax are bottom of the league phase table. / Marcel Bonte/Soccrates/Getty Images

At this stage of the competition, all hope is not lost yet for anyone.

Ajax are the only side without a point after five games yet could still, theoretically, haul themselves into the top 24 should they win their remaining three fixtures. Naturally, it’s unlikely.

The fallen Dutch giants, however, cannot gatecrash the top eight and automatically qualify for the round of 16 regardless of results. This is the same fate which has befallen Kairat, Villarreal, Bodø/Glimt, Slavia Prague, Eintracht Frankfurt and even Olympiacos, who boast five points from six games.

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