After another round of matches, Poland dropped from 11th to 12th place in UEFA’s national club ranking, even though it has the same point total as 11th-place Czechia. Meanwhile, the gap to 10th-place Greece is growing.
The UEFA ranking, which determines the allocation of places in the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League, as well as the stage at which individual teams enter, is based on the results of all teams competing in European cups over the past five seasons. Individual matches count (starting from qualifying), as do the level and type of competition. Points are awarded as follows: a win (from the league/main phase) earns 2 points and a win in qualifiers earns 1 point; a draw earns 1 and 0.5 points, respectively.
Points earned are divided by the number of teams representing a given country, so in Poland’s case this season it is five for the first time, rather than four as before. With minimal differences in points, that is an element that “makes a difference.”
In addition, bonus points are awarded for taking part in the main phase of each competition, for placement in that stage’s final standings and for each advance in the knockout phase; they are highest in the Champions League and lowest in the Conference League.
Polish clubs’ good results over the past dozen or so months have produced steady progress in the European hierarchy. Two years ago Poland was 21st, and at the end of the 2024/25 season it was already 15th. The result in the current edition — the UEFA ranking operates with a one-year lag — was five teams competing, including two in Champions League qualifying.
Poland began the previous season in 13th place in the national ranking because its modest haul of just four points from the 2020/21 cycle dropped out, and in the following four years things only got better. In October 2025, thanks to four teams advancing to the Conference League group stage, it reached 12th place and finished the season there.
This will be reflected in the next season (2027/28). Poland — as UEFA has already confirmed — can be sure of having two teams in the league phase of the European cups, because the national champion will start in the 4th qualifying round of the Champions League and, if it loses, will move to the Europa League, while the Polish Cup winner will start in the 4th round of the Europa League and, if eliminated, will “drop” to the Conference League.
In the 2025/26 edition Poland earned as many as 55.5 points (for 32 wins, including 15 outside qualifiers, and 11 draws), plus 7.5 bonus points, which after division by four clubs came to 15.750. That was the seventh-best total for the entire season, behind only the heavyweights of European football: England, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Italy and France.
It was also a historic result and more than three times better than in the 2021/22 season (4.625), which was still counted in the five-year ranking at that time.
After that total was dropped, Polish clubs began this year’s UEFA competition with 42.125 points, which put them in 11th place in the ranking. They now have 3.6 more (45.725), because in the current competition they have won 18 points (15 for 12 wins and six draws in qualifiers, and four for Jagiellonia Białystok’s win and Lech Poznań’s Thursday draw in the Europa League league phase), but that haul was divided by the number of teams (five).
Czech teams did only slightly better in the latest round, but it was enough to draw level with Poland on points.
Teams from Greece are doing better; the country strengthened its hold on 10th place with 46.612 points.
Norway, in 13th place, trails Poland and Czechia by 5.513 points, and 14th-place Denmark, which has a full complement of four teams “in play,” is slightly further back, but those are probably gaps too large to close in a single season.
However, it also says something that in the standings for this season alone, Poland is… 23rd, which does not reflect well on Ekstraklasa, Poland’s top league, and its representatives. Ranked higher are, among others, Azerbaijan, Slovakia and Latvia, and on Thursday, thanks to Levski Sofia’s win, Poland was also overtaken by Bulgaria.
England remains the leader of the five-year ranking with 106.463. Italy is second with 90.732 and Spain third with 85.868. The next places are held by Germany, France, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands and Turkey. (PAP)
