There’s a conversation happening right now in football that would’ve sounded completely mad ten years ago. Not “could England win the World Cup” levels of mad, but close. The kind of thing you’d dismiss immediately if someone said it down the pub after a fourth pint.
Seven English clubs. In the Champions League. Next season.
Not five. Not six (which, by the way, is already happening this very season and still feels slightly unreal every time you see the fixtures). Seven.
And if that’s not enough to get your head around, throw in the Europa League and Conference League and we’re potentially talking about eleven Premier League clubs playing in Europe next season. Eleven. Out of twenty. More than half the league, just casually competing across three European competitions.
So how did we get here? And can it actually happen?
How Did We Get to Six?
If you’ve been paying attention this season, you already know that six Premier League clubs are in the 2025/26 Champions League: Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester City, Chelsea, Newcastle, and Tottenham.
The top five got there through league position, which itself is already one more than the traditional four, thanks to UEFA’s European Performance Spot. Essentially a bonus Champions League place handed to the country whose clubs perform best collectively across European competition. England finished top of the 2024/25 association club coefficients, meaning Newcastle walked into Europe’s elite competition via the back door. Fifth place used to mean Europa League. Now it means Tuesday nights in the Bernabéu.
Then Tottenham did something genuinely remarkable. Despite finishing 17th in the Premier League last season, they won the Europa League final and earned automatic Champions League qualification. Football, honestly. You couldn’t make it up.
So six it was. Historic. And yet here we are in March 2026 already talking about doing it again, but better.
The Coefficient Situation Is Completely Bonkers
Here’s where the real story lives. England currently sit top of the 2025/26 association club coefficients on 223 points across nine clubs. Spain are second on 162. That’s not a gap, that’s a canyon.
We are, by some distance, the best-performing football nation in Europe this season.
Under UEFA’s system, the two associations that finish top of the coefficient rankings each season are awarded a European Performance Spot for the following year’s Champions League. England finishing first, which at this point looks nailed on, means a fifth Premier League club qualifies for the Champions League automatically, on top of the standard top-four allocation.
So that’s five from the league. But that’s just the start.
Where the Seventh Comes From
Right now, Arsenal, Man City, Man United and Aston Villa are on course to take the four automatic Champions League spots based on league position. Liverpool, sitting fifth, would pick up England’s European Performance Spot.
That’s five. Already one more than most leagues get.
But both Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest are through to the last 16 of the Europa League this season. Crystal Palace are competing in the Conference League. And here’s the crucial bit: if an English club wins one of those competitions and doesn’t already have a Champions League place locked in via their league finish, they get bumped straight up into next season’s Champions League.
That sixth spot, potentially seventh, comes through the cup routes. Win the Europa League and you’re in the Champions League. Simple as.
The maths suddenly starts getting very interesting for a lot of clubs still fighting in the table and on the continent simultaneously.
What Eleven Clubs in Europe Actually Looks Like
Let’s say England finish top of the coefficient rankings again. You’ve got your five in the Champions League. Then the Europa League place that would normally go to sixth in the Premier League, plus the FA Cup winners’ spot in the Europa League. That’s already seven or eight clubs in European football before you’ve even factored in Conference League qualification.
Stack on top of that any clubs winning European trophies this season and cascading up a competition, and you can genuinely map a route to eleven English clubs in Europe next season.
Think about that for a second. If you’re a betting man, the kind who’d compare casino bonuses with BonusFinder before placing a flutter on their side to make the top six, the odds on England dominating European football at club level have never looked shorter.
Because this isn’t just a one-season fluke. This is structural.
The Premier League Is Just Built Different Right Now
To be fair, none of this happens by accident. Six clubs in the 2025/26 Champions League means six clubs accumulating coefficient points simultaneously. More clubs in, more points earned, stronger average, and the cycle reinforces itself. England’s coefficient lead doesn’t just protect the extra spot, it keeps growing it.
Compare that to Spain, who’ve had their own recent dominance, or Germany, who have four guaranteed spots but a lower average performance across their clubs in Europe. The Premier League’s sheer depth, the fact that Newcastle, Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest and Crystal Palace are all competing in European knockouts this season, is what’s driving the numbers.
It’s not just the big boys doing the heavy lifting anymore. That’s what makes it different.
The Clubs Who Need to Pay Attention
Realistically, the race for a potential seventh Champions League spot next season runs through whoever wins the Europa League or Conference League this campaign.
Forest have been brilliant in Europe this season. Villa, under their new structure, have genuine quality throughout the squad. Palace in the Conference League are no joke either. Any of those three winning a European trophy and finishing outside the top four or five in the Premier League next season would trigger the cascade. Suddenly you’ve got a seventh English club in the Champions League.
It’d also be a genuine earthquake for clubs sitting sixth, seventh, eighth in the Premier League table. Because if the Europa League winners’ place gets used up by a club already in the Champions League, that berth drops down. Eighth place in the Premier League could realistically end up in European football next season. Eighth.
Brentford, Everton, whoever finds themselves in that conversation come April and May, this matters. Enormously.
Is This Good for Football?
Depends who you ask, honestly.
The romantic argument is that more clubs in Europe means more competitive matches, more exposure, more money filtering into the English game. The cynical one, and it’s not entirely wrong, is that it consolidates power further, makes it harder for clubs outside England’s elite to compete, and turns the Premier League into an even more dominant, self-sustaining machine.
What’s undeniable is that English football is in a completely different place to where it was even five years ago. Not just financially, but structurally. Clubs that finished seventh or eighth are now genuine European contenders. The idea of “settling for the Europa League” doesn’t really exist at the top end anymore. It’s increasingly just another route into the Champions League the following season.
So, Can It Actually Happen?
Seven in the Champions League? Yes, genuinely yes. It requires the right combination of results: an English club winning the Europa League or Conference League and finishing outside the automatic top-five spots in the Premier League. But it’s not a stretch.
Eleven in Europe? Also yes. The plumbing is all there. Five in the Champions League, two or three in the Europa League, two or three in the Conference League. Run the scenarios and you can get there.
Whether it happens this particular season or next depends on results between now and May. But the point is that we’re even having this conversation. That we can look at the table, at the coefficient numbers, at the European knockout rounds, and map out a realistic path to nearly half the Premier League playing continental football.
A decade ago, finishing in the top four was the dream. The benchmark every club built their season around.
Now? The top four is almost a given for the big lads. The real question is how far down the table European football is about to reach, and whether English football’s grip on UEFA’s competitions is only just getting started.
Spoiler: it probably is.
