Champions League Prize Money 2025/26: How Clubs Reach €150m+ in TV Revenue

Paul Macdonald

24 Feb 2026 02:30 CST
3 min read

Here’s why the Champions League truly is the leading cup competition that everyone wants to win.

€2.47 Bn (74%) of Uefa’s overall available money pot is available to this competition.

How this is split among the competing clubs is split across what Uefa calls pillars. These pillars are equal shares, performance-related amounts, and the newly-introduced ‘value’ pillar.

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EQUAL SHARES

This is guaranteed money, meaning teams receive these payments for reaching the group stage, irrespective of their performance when they get there.

This pot is around €670m, or 28%, of the overall money available. So for reference, the €18.5m earned just for being in the draw is the rough equivalent of appearing in the Europa Conference League final.

PERFORMANCE

Teams, of course, get rewarded the deeper they go into the competition and Uefa designates €910m to this, or around 37% of the overall pot.

A victory earns €2.1m, and a draw earns €750k. So Arsenal, by virtue of winning every group match, banked €16.8m. Kairat Almaty, in bottom, still took home €750k for their solitary point earned.

There’s also what is known as a ranking bonus, given to the position you finish in. There’s €182m dedicated to this. Arsenal received €9.9m, and the number incrementally falls until the 36th club, which receives €275k. So for being the worst team in the tournament, Kairat banked around €20m. Not bad!

There’s also an ‘extra placement bonus’ which is for some reason kept separate from the ranking bonus, but guarantees more money for the clubs near the top.

Finishing 1-8 earns each club €2m each, while finishing 19-16 earns each club €1m each.

Finally, there’s awards for reaching each further round onwards. Teams 9-24 earn €1m each for this round, before the real money starts to come in.

- Reaching the Round of 16 earns €11m per club.

- Quarter-finals: €12.5m per club

- Semi-finals: €15m per club

- Final: €18.5m per club

- Winner: An additional €6.5m

So a club that goes from the league phase all the way to lifting the trophy can stack these amounts on top of their starting fee, match bonuses and ranking bonuses. For PSG, that added up to €144m last season - and that was with them only winning four matches in the league phase. If Arsenal were to win this season, for example, that number will be bigger.

VALUE (MARKET + COEFFICIENT)

This is where it gets a little more difficult to calculate what a club will earn until the season is complete.

The value pot is about €850m of the total, or 35%. This is distributed in a number of ways, including:

- The media rights value of each club’s domestic TV market

- Uefa club coefficients (this takes into account performance in the previous five and ten years in Europe)

The big five hold sway over this pot because of prior performance, which is in some ways a self-fulfilling prophecy and one that protects their elite status.

For example, a Premier League team might earn anywhere up to €40m from this pot should they reach the final, while a smaller European nation has a far lower media rights value and as such might receive as little as €4m. It’s a big difference and is, again, a level of protectionism.

Arsenal’s potential earnings

What Arsenal might make this season should they win the tournament, as an illustrative example:

- Starting Fee: €18.6m

- League-Phase Match Bonuses: €16.8m for eight wins

- Finishing 1st → circa. €10m

- Placement bonus for finishing 1st €2m

Knockout Rounds:

- Round of 16: €11m

- Quarter‑final: €12.5m

- Semi‑final: €15m

- Final: €18.5m

- Winner bonus: €6.5m

- Projected Value pillar: €40m

Total: €150.9m

This amount, coupled with the amount owed from domestic and international rights deals for the Premier League, could see Arsenal take home the biggest single-season amount from TV deals in history.

Read more about: UEFA Champions League