European football governing body UEFA has announced that there will be a revamped version of the Champions League from the 2024/25 season, Sport Access gathered.
The new format of European football's premier club competition will see each side drawn into the tournament play eight games, four at home and four away, as opposed to the existing six in a group stage.
The teams that finish first to eighth on the league table will automatically qualify for the competition's knockout stages, while the teams that finish in ninth to 24th place will compete in two-legged play-off matches in order to ensure their progress to the tournament's round of 16.
One of the most important changes to the new version of the Champions League is its expansion. The intercontinental club competition will go from having 32 teams to 36 competitors.
One of the additional four spots will go to the club that finishes third in the league of the fifth-best association in Europe, according to the UEFA national association ranking.
Another will be awarded to a domestic champion by extending, from four to five, the number of clubs qualifying via the so-called "Champions Path".
For the final two spots, the associations with the best collective performance by their teams in the previous season will be chosen (total points earned divided by the number of participating clubs).
This season, those two associations, if they had judged the 2021/22 campaign based on the collective performance of their clubs, would be England and the Netherlands.
The UEFA Europa League (eight matches in the league stage) and the UEFA Europa Conference League (six matches in the league stage) are set to be similarly formatted, and both will feature 36 teams in the league phase.
UEFA hope the restructuring of the competition will end any potential talks of a breakaway European Super League.
Twelve of Europe's biggest clubs signed up for the proposed new competition last April, but it collapsed within days following a fierce backlash from players and fans, as well as governments and football governing bodies.
"UEFA has clearly shown today that we are fully committed to respecting the fundamental values of sport and to defending the key principle of open competitions, with qualification based on sporting merit, fully in line with the values and solidarity-based European sports model," UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin said, as per the organisation's official website.