The men's EHF Champions League is preparing for the biggest structural overhaul of its modern era, with European handball's flagship club competition set to move from a 16-team to a 24-team format from the 2026-27 season onwards.
The expansion plan, reported by Handball-Planet ahead of the EHF's spring rights cycle, would bring the competition closer to the format already used in elite men's football and basketball and would deliver more matches between traditional Champions League regulars and the next tier of clubs from across the continent.
"At least 14 countries to play EHF Champions League," EHF Federation president Michael Wiederer said in confirming the broader direction, signalling that the expansion would significantly widen the federation participation base. The current 16-team field has historically been dominated by clubs from Germany, France, Hungary, Spain, Poland and Denmark, with national league champions from smaller federations confined to qualification rounds.
The shift to 24 teams is being driven by two converging factors. The first is broadcast and commercial - bigger group stages mean more matchdays, more inventory for the EHF's media partners and more rights value for the federation. The second is sporting equity. National federations outside the top six have spent the last decade lobbying for guaranteed Champions League pathways, arguing that the qualification round bottleneck has kept their clubs out of the showpiece group stage even when they have won their domestic leagues comfortably.
The structural details of the 24-team format have not yet been published in full, but the working model under discussion mirrors the European basketball template: two groups of 12 teams in the regular season, followed by a knockout phase that consolidates back to eight in the spring before the Cologne Final 4 weekend. That would deliver more than 250 group-stage matches across the regular season, up from around 140 in the current 16-team setup.
For traditional Champions League heavyweights, the expansion is a mixed picture. Clubs such as SC Magdeburg, Paris Saint-Germain, Veszprem and Barcelona - who locked down the 2026 Final 4 places at the Lanxess Arena - will retain their direct qualification on title or national-league strength. But the increased volume of group stage matches means more away trips to clubs from smaller federations and a longer schedule that will test playing-squad depth.
For clubs in countries such as Switzerland, Slovenia, Romania and the Nordic federations beyond Denmark, the expansion is the structural breakthrough they have been lobbying for. The qualification round has effectively been a cap on how often champion clubs from these countries reached the group phase; a 24-team field would lift that cap entirely.
The financial impact is also expected to flow back to the clubs. The EHF distributes prize money and TV rights revenue on a tiered basis, with group-stage participants earning a meaningful share. Adding eight more clubs to the group stage means a larger pool of clubs sharing in the central income - exactly the redistribution model that smaller federations have been pushing.
The most likely confirmation timetable points to the EHF Executive Committee finalising the new format ahead of the 2026 Final 4 weekend in Cologne, with the first 24-team Champions League season tipping off in September 2026. The transition, if confirmed, would mark the most significant structural change to the men's Champions League since the introduction of the current group-stage format in 2015.
