2025/26 Champions League coefficients – Newcastle United ranked 29 of 29 and why so important | OneFootball

Newcastle United will find out their eight 2025/26 Champions League opponents on Thursday 28 August 2025.

The league phase draw for the 2025/26 UEFA Champions League will take place at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco.

The 36 teams will be divided into four pots of nine teams each, based on their UEFA club coefficients, except for the Champions League title holders, who are automatically placed as the top seed in POT 1.

The 36 teams will be manually drawn and then automated software will draw their eight different opponents at random, determining which of their matches are at home and which ones away.

Each team faces two opponents from each of the four pots, one at home and one away.

Teams cannot face opponents from their own association, and can only be drawn against a maximum of two sides from the same association.

So Newcastle United can’t face another English club in this 36 club league phase of the 2025/26 Champions League and a maximum of two from another country.

Next week (Tuesday 8 July an Wednesday 9 July) the qualifying process gets underway to determine the clubs that will fill the final seven places in the 36 team league phase. That process will finally reach a final conclusion on Wednesday 27 August 2025, we will then have the full list of 36 clubs only the night before the big draw.

I want you though to concentrate on the 29 clubs that have qualified so far.

We all know now which POT each of the 29 teams are in.

Here are all four POTS and the number of coefficient points each of the 29 had, that determined which POT they were placed in (***As holders, PSG would automatically have been in POT 1 but they had the fifth highest number of coefficient points, so would have been in POT 1 regardless).

The total of coefficient points for this 2025/26 Champions League to decide which POT you were in, is how many points each club has accumulated over the last five seasons of European competitions:

POT 1

143.500 Real Madrid

137.750 Man City

135.250 Bayern Munich

125.500 Liverpool

116.250 Inter Milan

109.000 Chelsea

106.750 Borussia Dortmund

103.250 Barcelona

POT 2

98.000 Arsenal

95.250 Bayer Leverkusen

93.500 Atletico Madrid

82.000 Atalanta

82.000 Villarreal

74.250 Juventus

74.000 Eintracht Frankfurt

POT 3

70.250 Tottenham

69.250 PSV Eindhoven

67.250 Ajax

61.000 Napoli

59.000 Sporting Lisbon

56.500 Olympiakos

51.000 Slavia Prague

48.000 Marseille

POT 4

41.000 Monaco

38.250 Galatasaray

36.000 Union Saint-Gilloise

26.750 Athletic Bilbao

8.000 (***23.039) Newcastle United

As you can see, by some distance, Newcastle United have easily the lowest number of coefficient points of all the 29 who have qualified so far. The 8.000 coefficient points all picked up when competing in the 2023/24 Champions League.

(***)For competition seeding purposes, when deciding which POT each club were placed in, Newcastle United were actually given a figure of 23.039. This doesn’t mean they now have 23.039 coefficient points, this number is 20% of the coefficient of the national association of the club from the last five seasons. This 20% figure is only used for competition seeding purposes, if it is higher than the individual club’s five-year club coefficient.

IMAGO/Sportsphoto

Why is it important how many coefficient points you have?

This is taken from the official UEFA site:

D.1 System overview

‘UEFA calculates the coefficient of each club each season based on the clubs’ results in the UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League and UEFA Conference League.

The season coefficients from the five most recent seasons are used to rank the clubs for seeding purposes (sporting club coefficient).

In addition, the season coefficients from the ten most recent seasons are used to calculate revenue club coefficients for revenue distribution purposes only.’

As usual, we are talking about power and money.

When it comes to how the 2025/26 Champions League cash is shared out, a significant amount of the cash is based on your performances in Europe over the past ten seasons.

It is funny (though not amusing kind of funny) that UEFA are keen to talk about fairness and making everything more competitive and yet they decide a significant part of the cash allocation based on which clubs have been the strongest (and invariably the richest as well) over the past decade. It is a strange kind of fairness and trying to make things supposedly more competitive (levelling up?) when you are giving yet more cash to those who already are richest and most powerful (regulars in European competition, especially the most successful), whilst giving less to the ones trying to catch up, who haven’t had the same cash and competitive benefit from the previous decade in Europe.

Two seasons ago, Newcastle United did marginally better than Manchester United in the 2023/24 Champions League and yet Man U received around £20m more than NUFC. Not due to what happened in that 2023/24 competition but because of the previous ten years. Things have changed now to a 36 league system instead of 32 clubs divided into eight groups of four, however, the cash payout formula still dictates that the previous ten years of European competition will benefit some at the expense of others.

Newcastle United

When Newcastle United are 29th highest of 29 qualifiers so far, it isn’t difficult to think at what end of things NUFC are at, when it comes to cash paid out that is dependent on the last ten years of European competition.

More coefficient points are available in the Champions League compared to the Europa League, then a drop again in overall points available in the Conference League. However, if a club does poorly in the Champions League, it is possible for clubs in the other two competitions to pick up more coefficient points that season, if they go far in their respective competitions.

Bottom line is that Newcastle United have to start building up their coefficient points longer term and no better place to start than this coming season in the 2025/26 Champions League, the competition where you can pick up the most coefficient points through winning matches and progressing, with various bonus points on offer.

Reality is that the system is never going to change, UEFA may rearrange things and do it a little differently, but fact remains that overall it will continue to be set up to reward those who are already successful on a regular basis. Exactly the same as with the Premier League.

The more that you are successful, both in Europe and the Premier League, then the more powerful and richer you get AND the system(s) are set up to then try and help you to stay there and make the financial gap ever bigger.

Newcastle United need to get their snout in the UEFA (and Premier League) trough and then make sure they keep it there.

Success in the 2025/26 Champions League is important on so many levels.

On top of everything else…

Yet another bonus incentive for Newcastle United, when it comes to trying to accumulate as many coefficient points this coming season, is that it could be vital in determining NUFC participation in the 2026/27 Champions League.

As we all know, the participation of Newcastle United in the 2025/26 Champions League is only happening due to how English clubs did last season in European competition. Their collective results meant that the Premier League was awarded a bonus fifth place, along with La Liga, Villarreal benefiting in Spain. NUFC and the other English clubs need to perform this coming season in Europe, as having a bonus fifth spot gives massive extra hope for those chasing Champions League qualification.