by The year 2025 promises a packed calendar in women’s football with three big stakes for those pushing forward in the 2024/25 season. The first half will be dominated by the culmination of current club competitions, in parallel with the UEFA Women’s Nations League. That will pave the way to a summer packed with three continental competitions. Season 2025/26 promises more club glory with the introduction of an additional European club competition.
1. UEFA Women’s Nations League Return
It will be a year packed with international football excitement, kicked off by the return of the second edition of the UEFA Women’s Nations League. The draws for the groups in League A, B and C, were held at the end of 2024, with the first match-day to be played on the 21st of February.
As in the first edition, the winners of the groups in League A will qualify for the Knockout stages of the Finals, with the intention of lifting the UEFA Women’s Nations League Trophy. In parallel, the competition will begin to set the order for the European Qualifications phase for the FIFA Women’s World Cup of 2025, based on the promotion and relegation spots.
The competition will be played across three breaks, with two games played in each one, culminating on the 3rd of June. Group A3 has been dubbed the group of death with world champions and Women’s Nations League holders, Spain, battling European champions England, along with Belgium and Portugal looking to spoil the party.
League B will continue to be a bloodbath with the fever of promotion running just as high as the fear of relegation. Group B1 will pit Bosnia & Herzegovina against Northern Ireland once more, while the two will also need to battle Poland and Romania. Group B3 features strong competition as well with Finland facing Serbia and Hungary, together with Belarus who return to their League B status.
League C features the most groups, with three groups featuring four teams, while another three feature just three teams. Malta will hope to return to League B and will be up against Cyprus, Georgia and Andorra. The first match will be played on Cyprian soil on the 21st of February, before Malta hosts Andorra on the 25th.
The final matchday of the league phase of the UEFA Women’s Nations League will be on the 3rd of June. The full list of groups, fixtures and matchdays may be found here.
A few matches have already been fixed in terms of times and venues as well. Tickets are already on sale for the match at Wembley Stadium between England and Spain on the 26th February (KO 21:00).
2. A Summer Packed With The EURO, WAFCON & Copa America
The end of the league phase of the UEFA Women’s Nations League will set the stage for the UEFA Women’s EURO finals which will take place in Switzerland between the 2nd and 27th July. A total of sixteen teams will be competing in the group stage, with the hosts, Switzerland, facing Norway, Iceland and Finland.
Spain will hope to add the trophy to their World Cup achievement, and as noted above will be in familiar company against Belgium and Portugal following the UEFA Women’s Nations League exploits. Twice runners-up, Italy, will be completing the group.
The last edition’s runners-up and most successful country in the competition, Germany, will be hoping to return to glory, but will need to overthrow the challenge from Poland, Denmark and Sweden. Sweden have won the competition once, but have in recent years gotten stuck at the semi-final stage which will be a trend they will certainly want to change. Denmark finished runners-up to the Netherlands in 2017 and are on the up once more. Although outsiders, Poland are no slouches either.
England will go into the competition as the defending champions, with neighbours Wales for company. France and former champions under Sarina Wiegman’s tutage, the Netherlands, complete the group.
However, this summer will play host to two more continental competitions. The Women’s African Cup of Nations will overlap with the European counterpart, played between the 5th and 26th July. It will be held in Morocco.
The hosts will hope to build on their recent strong World Cup performance and fight again for the dream of lifting a major trophy on home soil, having had the dream dashed in the last edition as they finished runners-up to South Africa. The latter will go into it as defending champions, while Nigeria will look to restore their crown as the country with the most wins, having won 11 out of the 14 editions.
However, they will face staunch opposition from nations, such as Ghana who hope to improve on their best ever finish of runners-up, while Zambia, Tunisia and Senegal will also push toward trophy glory.
Slightly delayed in its start, but bringing just as much football fever will be the Copa America. It will be hosted by Ecuador and will begin on the 12th of July, running until the 2nd of August.
Brazil will continue to be the team to beat having history on their side, as well as a strong performance to back them in last summer’s Paris Olympics. Argentina remains the only team to have overthrown them for the title, but Colombia will be another nation to look out for in this summer’s edition.
3. A Second European Club Competition & Revamped UWCL
The UEFA Women’s Champions League is under way for this season with Barcelona looking for a third successive win. The competition is heading toward the quarter-final stages, with the teams including former champions Lyon, Wolfsburg and Arsenal. Former runners-up Chelsea are having a good run under the new leadership of Sonia Bompastor, while Bayern Munich and Manchester City are also in the mix. Real Madrid complete the set, making the quarter-final for just the second-time in their history.
However, while these teams will eye a place on the pitch of the home Sporting Lisbon in this May’s final, plenty of others will be hard at work with plans on a chance to compete in the 2025/26 season, which will feature a second European competition.
Changes are afoot in the UEFA Women’s Champions League, which will no longer feature a group stage, but will instead have an 18-team league stage where teams will play six games each against six different teams.
The eighteen teams to compete in the league stage are split into nine automatic qualifiers (including the title-holders from this 2024/25 season) and nine teams who will come into it following qualification from the Champions Path and League Paths. Qualifiers from the league stage will proceed into the Quarter-Final stage, at which point a knockout-format will determine the winner of the UEFA Women’s Champions League.
However, in parallel there will be a second European competition, which will feature six rounds in Knockout fashion – round 1, round 2, the round of 16, quarter-finals, semi-finals and the final. All rounds will be two-legged, including the final.
The competition starts in round 1 which will be made up of thirteen teams hailing from National Leagues, who will be joined by 31 teams eliminated from the UEFA Women’s Champions League. The latter will be distributed into round 1 and round 2 via a feeding process.
The competition should expand the opportunity for more clubs to compete at European level, while offering more European matches for those knocked out at earlier stages of the UEFA Women’s Champions League.
Incentives are set, but the ball remains in the court of the teams willing to pave their own slice of history. That work is already in motion with domestic leagues in full swing and returning following the Christmas breaks.
Malta’s Assikura Women’s League returns on the 9th of January, with fourth-placed Mgarr United looking to close the gap to the league leaders, Swieqi United, to one point. They will meet under the floodlights at the Centenary Stadium at 20:15.
Lead Images: DAZN via X / GOAL via X / Copa America via Instagram / UWCL via X
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