Draft:2025–26 UEFA Women’s Nations League
| Dates | League phase: September – December 2025 Nations League Finals and promotion/relegation matches February 2026 |
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The 2025–26 UEFA Women's Nations League will be the second season of the UEFA Women's Nations League, an international women's football competition contested by the senior women's national teams of the member associations of UEFA. The results will be used to determine the leagues for the upcoming 2027 FIFA Women's World Cup qualifying competition.
Format[edit]
The competition will begin with the league stage, featuring the national teams split into three leagues (A, B, and C) based on their performance in the UEFA Women's Euro 2025 qualifying. Leagues A and B will feature 16 teams in four groups of four teams, while League C will consist of the remaining competition entrants split into groups of three or four teams.
The teams in each group will play against each other home-and-away in a round-robin format. The four group winners of League A will advance to the Nations League Finals, which will feature single-leg semi-finals, a third place play-off and final. An open draw will determine the pairings and home teams for the semi-final matches, as well as which semi-final will have its teams host the third place play-off and final.
In addition, the competition will feature promotion and relegation, taking effect in FIFA Women's World Cup 2027 qualifying (which will use an identical league structure). The group winners of Leagues B and C will be automatically promoted, while the fourth-placed teams in Leagues A and B, as well as the lowest-ranked third-placed team in League B, will be automatically relegated. Promotion and relegation matches will also be held on a home-and-away basis, taking place in parallel with the Nations League Finals, with the winners going into the higher league and the losers going into the lower league. The third-placed teams of League A will play the runners-up of League B, while the three best-ranked third-placed teams in League B will play the three best-ranked League C runners-up.[1] The teams from the higher leagues will be seeded, and play the second leg at home. In the two-legged ties, the team that scores more goals on aggregate is the winner. If the aggregate score is level, extra time is played (the away goals rule is not applied). If the score remains level after extra time, a penalty shoot-out is used to decide the winner.[2]
Seeding[edit]
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Updated to match(es) played on 9 April 2024.
Source: UEFA |
Updated to match(es) played on 9 April 2024.
Source: UEFA |
Updated to match(es) played on 9 April 2024.
Source: UEFA |
Notes[edit]
- ^ Due to unequal group sizes, matches against fourth place teams were not considered in ranking teams finishing first through third.
References[edit]
- ^ "How will the new UEFA women's national team competition system work?". UEFA.com. Union of European Football Associations. 3 November 2022. Retrieved 3 November 2022.
- ^ "Regulations of the UEFA European Women's Championship including UEFA Nations League and European Qualifiers". UEFA. 7 February 2023. Archived (PDF) from the original on 7 February 2023. Retrieved 7 February 2023.