The 2020–21 UEFA Women's Champions League was the 20th edition of the European women's club football championship organised by UEFA, and the 12th edition since being rebranded as the UEFA Women's Champions League.
The final was held at the Gamla Ullevi in Gothenburg, Sweden. The winners of the 2020–21 UEFA Women's Champions League automatically qualified for the 2021–22 UEFA Women's Champions League group stage, which will be the first edition to feature a 16-team group stage.
Lyon were the defending champions, having won the previous five editions, but were eliminated by Paris Saint-Germain in the quarter-finals. Barcelona won their first title by beating Chelsea in the final, becoming the first club to have won both men's and women's Champions League titles.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe, each local health department allowed a different number of spectators.
Association team allocation
The association ranking based on the UEFA women's country coefficients was used to determine the number of participating teams for each association: Associations 1–12 each had two teams qualify. All other associations , if they have entered, each had one team qualify. The winners of the 2019–20 UEFA Women's Champions League were given an additional entry if they did not qualify for the 2020–21 UEFA Women's Champions League through their domestic league. However, the title holders had qualified through their domestic league, meaning the additional entry was not necessary for this season.
An association must have had an eleven-a-side women's domestic league to enter a team. In 2019–20, 52 of the 55 UEFA member associations organized a women's domestic league, with the exceptions being Andorra, Liechtenstein and San Marino.
Association ranking
For the 2020–21 UEFA Women's Champions League, the associations were allocated places according to their 2019 UEFA women's country coefficients, which took into account their performance in European competitions from 2014–15 to 2018–19. For the first time there were two entries for the Netherlands and Kazakhstan.
Notes
NR – No rank (association did not enter in any of the seasons used for computing coefficients) DNE – Did not enter NL – No women's domestic league
Distribution
Unlike the men's Champions League, not every association entered a team, and so the exact number of teams entering in the qualifying rounds (played as two rounds of single-legged ties for this season) and knockout phase (starting from the round of 32, played as home-and-away two-legged ties except for the one-match final) could not be determined until the full entry list was known. In general, the title holders, the champions of the top 12 associations, and the runners-up of highest-ranked associations (exact number depending on the number of entries) received a bye to the round of 32. All other teams (runners-up of lowest-ranked associations and champions of associations starting from 13th) entered the qualifying round, with the group winners and a maximum of two best runners-up advancing to the round of 32.
The following was the access list for this season.
Teams
In early April 2020, UEFA announced that due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe, the deadline for entering the tournament had been postponed until further notice. On 17 June 2020, UEFA announced that associations had to enter their teams by 10 August 2020. The 2020–21 season was the first where teams had to obtain a UEFA club license to participate in the UEFA Women's Champions League.
A total of 62 teams from 50 of the 55 UEFA member associations participated in the 2020–21 UEFA Women's Champions League.
The labels in the parentheses show how each team qualified for the place of its starting round: TH: Title holders 1st, 2nd: League positions of the previous season Abd-: League positions of abandoned season due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe as determined by the national association; all teams were subject to approval by UEFA as per the guidelines for entry to European competitions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic
Notes
Schedule
The schedule of the competition was as follows (all draws were held at the UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland). The tournament would have originally started in August 2020, but was initially delayed to October due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe. However, due to the continuing pandemic in Europe, UEFA announced a new format and schedule on 16 September 2020. Instead of mini-tournaments, the qualifying rounds were played as two rounds of single leg knockout matches.