A total of 66 teams competed in the group stage qualifying rounds of the 2023–24 UEFA Women's Champions League, which included two rounds, with 44 teams in the Champions Path and 22 teams in the League Path. The 12 winners in the round 2 (seven from Champions Path, five from League Path) advanced to the group stage, to join the four teams that entered in that round.
Times are CEST (UTC+2), as listed by UEFA (local times, if different, are in parentheses).
Teams
Champions Path
The Champions Path included all league champions which do not qualified directly for the group stage, and consisted of the following rounds:
Round 1 (41 teams playing one-legged semi-finals, final and third place match): 41 teams entered in this round.
Round 2 (14 teams): three teams entered in this round and eleven winners of the round 1 finals.
Below are the participating teams of the Champions Path (with their 2023 UEFA club coefficients),[2] grouped by the starting rounds.
Round 1 consisted of mini-tournaments with two semi-finals, a final and a third-place play-off hosted by one of the participating teams. If the score was level at the end of normal time, extra time would have been played, and if the same number of goals was scored by both teams during extra time, the tie would have been decided by a penalty shoot-out. Round 2 was played over two legs, with each team playing one leg at home. The team that scored more goals on aggregate over the two legs advance to the next round. If the aggregate score was level at the end of normal time of the second leg, extra time would have been played, and if the same number of goals was scored by both teams at the end of normal time, the tie would have been decided by a penalty shoot-out. An additional preliminary round consisting of two-legged home-and-away matches would have been played by the champions from the lowest-ranked associations if more than 50 associations had entered the tournament and the title holders had not qualified through league position. Since only 50 associations entered, this round was skipped.[1]
In the draws for each round, teams were seeded based on their UEFA club coefficients at the beginning of the season, with the teams divided into seeded and unseeded pots containing the same number of teams. Prior to the draws, UEFA may form "groups" in accordance with the principles set by the Club Competitions Committee, but they were purely for convenience of the draw and did not resemble any real groupings in the sense of the competition. Teams from associations with political conflicts as decided by UEFA were not drawn into the same tie. After the draws, the order of legs of a tie could have been reversed by UEFA due to scheduling or venue conflicts.
Schedule
The schedule of the competition was as follows (all draws were held at the UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland).[3]
Schedule for 2023–24 UEFA Women's Champions League qualifying rounds
Seeding of teams for the semi-final round was based on their 2023 UEFA club coefficients,[2] with 22 seeded teams and 19 unseeded teams in the Champions Path, and eight seeded teams and eight unseeded teams in the League Path. Teams were drawn into two semi-finals within each four team group and, for the groups with three teams, the team with the highest coefficient was given a bye to the final. In the semi-finals, seeded teams were considered the "home" team, while in the third-place play-offs and finals, the teams with the highest coefficients were considered the "home" team for administrative purposes. Due to political reasons, teams from the following associations could not be drawn into the same group: Kosovo / Bosnia and Herzegovina; Kosovo / Serbia; Kosovo / Russia; Ukraine / Belarus.
A total of 24 teams played in Round 2. The draw took place on 15 September 2023.[59][60]
Seeding of teams was based on their 2023 UEFA club coefficients,[2] with seven seeded and unseeded teams in the Champions Path, and five seeded and unseeded teams in the League Path. Teams were drawn into two-legged-ties, where the first drawn team played the first leg at home and teams from the same association could not be drawn against each other.
