The 70th season of the UEFA Champions League begins today with the first of eight matchdays of a redesigned tournament.
The annual top-class European football tournament pits 36 of the continent’s best club teams against each other, giving fans more opportunities than ever to see their teams play against other top clubs.
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Of course, last year’s winners Real Madrid will also be there again, as will the 2023-24 runners-up Borussia Dortmund and the 2022-23 champions Manchester City.
Below we’ve broken down how to tune in to each match on Matchday 1, with a schedule and overview of how the new tournament style will work.
Here’s how you can watch and stream Matchday 1 of the UEFA Champions League for free:
The streaming home of the UEFA Champions League in the United States is Paramount+, so every game of every matchday will be streamed there.
Our favorite way to watch Paramount+ is with the Prime Video Channels add-on, which is available to all Prime Video subscribers.
Prime Video Channels allows Amazon Prime subscribers to add streaming subscriptions to Prime Video, combining multiple services in one convenient app.
It costs the same as a direct subscription: $7.99/month with ads and $12.99/month without ads. It also includes a seven-day free trial.
You’ll obviously need to be an Amazon Prime subscriber to Prime Video to add Paramount+, but if you’re not, that’s fine, as there’s a 30-day free trial for that, too.
Schedule for Matchday 1 of the UEFA Champions League:
Each day of the first UCL matchday will feature six matches; two will begin at 12:45pm ET, while the other four will kick off at 3pm ET.
Tuesday, September 17
- Juventus – PSV, 12:45 ET
- Young Boys vs Aston Villa, 12:45pm ET
- Bayern Munich vs GNK Dinamo, 3:00 p.m. ET
- AC Milan vs Liverpool, 3:00 p.m. ET
- Real Madrid – Stuttgart, 3:00 p.m. ET
- Sporting CP vs Lille, 3:00 p.m. ET
Wednesday, September 18
- Bologna vs. Shakhtar, 12:45 ET
- Sparta Praha vs. Salzburg, 12:45 ET
- Club Brugge – Borussia Dortmund, 3:00 p.m. ET
- Celtic vs ŠK Slovan Bratislava, 3:00 p.m. ET
- Man City – Inter Milan, 3:00 p.m. ET
- Paris-Girona, 3:00 p.m. ET
Thursday, September 19
- Crvena Zvezda vs. Benfica, 12:45 ET
- Feyenoord vs Leverkusen, 12:45 ET
- Atalanta vs Arsenal, 3:00 p.m. ET
- Atleta vs Leipzig, 3:00 p.m. ET
- Monaco vs. Barcelona, 3:00 p.m. ET
- Brest vs Sturm Graz, 3:00 p.m. ET
Explanation of the new UEFA Champions League format:
2024–25 will be the first year in which the UCL will use a “Swiss” system, which, among other things, replaces the group stage with a league stage.
Previous UCL tournaments began with a group stage where 32 teams were divided into eight groups of four, similar to the group stage at this summer’s Euros. From there, each team played every opponent in their group twice – home and away – before advancing to the knockout phase.
In this new game format, the league phase has been expanded to 36 teams. Instead of seeding the teams and organizing them into groups, each team plays against eight different teams, half at home and half away. The teams are organized into a single league competition in which all 36 teams are ranked together.
However, nothing has changed in terms of the points system; the winner gets three points, while the clubs that end in a draw get one point each.
This is both to give clubs the opportunity to compete against a wider range of opponents and to give fans the opportunity to see top teams compete against each other more often and earlier in the tournament.
From there, the best eight clubs in all disciplines automatically advance to the round of 16, while the teams ranked 9th to 24th compete for qualification in a knockout playoff.
Outside the UCL, this new format will also be used in Europa League and UEFA Conference League matches.
When is the next UEFA Champions League matchday?
The second matchday of the UCL will take place on Tuesday, October 1st and Wednesday, October 2nd.
Which clubs have qualified for the 2024 UEFA Champions League?
- Arsenal (Premier League)
- Aston Villa (Premier League)
- Atalanta (Serie A)
- Atletico Madrid (La Liga)
- Borussia Dortmund (Bundesliga)
- Barcelona (La Liga)
- Bayern Munich (Bundesliga)
- Benfica (Portuguese League)
- Bologna (Serie A)
- Brest (Ligue 1)
- Celtic (Scottish Premier League)
- Club Brugge (Belgian Pro League)
- Crvena Zvezda (Serbian SuperLiga)
- Feyenoord (Eredivisie)
- Girona (La Liga)
- GNK Dinamo (Croatian Football League)
- Inter Milan (Serie A)
- Juventus (Serie A)
- Liverpool (UK)
- Leverkusen (Bundesliga)
- Lille (Ligue 1)
- Liverpool (Premier League)
- Manchester City (Premier League)
- AC Milan (Serie A)
- Monaco (League 1)
- Paris Saint Germain (Ligue 1)
- PSV Eindhoven (Eredivisie)
- Real Madrid (Spain)
- Slovan Bratislava (Slovak Super League)
- Salzburg (Austrian Bundesliga)
- Shakhtar Donetsk (Ukrainian Premier League)
- Sparta Prague (First Czech League)
- Sporting CP (Portuguese League)
- Sturm Graz (Austrian Bundesliga)
- Stuttgart (Bundesliga)
- Young Boys (Swiss Super League)
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This article was written by Angela Tricarico, commerce writer/reporter for Post Wanted Shopping and Decider, the New York Post’s streaming offering. Angela keeps readers up to date on deals cable TV customers can no longer take advantage of and informs them on how to watch their favorite sports teams, TV shows and movies on each streaming service. In addition to testing and comparing the streaming services she writes about to ensure readers get the best prices, Angela is also a superfan who specializes in the intersection of shopping, technology, sports and pop culture. Before joining Decider and the New York Post in 2023, she wrote about streaming and consumer technology at Insider Reviews.
