The Champions League has four qualifying rounds, with two-legged fixtures starting in mid-June. All CL qualifiers are seeded into these rounds depending on how high they finished and which league they qualified from or won the domestic cup in, as above. The 96 winners in the 4th qualifying round (late July) go to the CL group stage, the losers go to the WL group stage.

Each group stage features 24 groups of 4. CL plays on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, WL on Thursdays. The 24 group winners qualify directly for the knockout rounds. The 24 second-place finishers and the 8 best third-place finishers qualify for two single-legged playoff rounds held in December in the same country that is hosting the finals. The 8 teams that get through the playoffs join the group winners in the knockout rounds starting in February, and everything goes as you'd expect from there.