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EHF Champions League 2026/27 (F)

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EHF Champions League 2026/27 (F) · 81 members

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EHF Champions League 2026/27 (F)

Handball · 2026/27

Thirty-one to twenty-nine, away from home and against the holders. Metz won 2025/26 inside Győr's own arena, the club that had spent years making this competition its home, and that scoreline redrew the map of European women's handball.

2026/27 begins on 5 September with sixteen teams in two groups and a long first phase that does not close until 20 February. Győr and Metz are there, of course, but so are CSM Bucureşti, Brest, Esbjerg and Odense: six clubs that have reached a final in the last eight years and who meet each other from the opening round.

The duel explains itself: Győr against Metz, the side that lost its throne against the one that took it by two goals. The 2026 final was settled in the last five minutes.

From Kyiv to Budapest

The women's Champions League has been played since 1961 and its roll of honour reads like a map of twentieth-century Europe. The club with the most titles is still Spartak Kyiv, with thirteen, all of them between the sixties and the eighties; behind them Austria's Hypo Niederösterreich with eight, almost all in the nineties. Neither is a power today: women's handball has moved its capital three times in sixty years.

The current capital is Győr, a Hungarian city of 130,000 halfway between Budapest and Vienna. Its club, Győri Audi ETO KC, built the most dominant cycle the competition has seen from 2013 onwards and reached final after final with squads combining the best Norwegian, French, Dutch and Hungarian players.

A stable group of challengers grew around it: Romania's CSM București, Norway's Vipers, Denmark's Esbjerg, France's Metz and Brest, Ferencváros. Since 2014 the title has been decided, as in the men's game, in a single-match FINAL4; its home is the MVM Dome in Budapest, and that is where every attendance record in women's club handball has been set.

Last edition

On 7 June 2026 Metz beat Győr 31-29 in the final, 18-17 at half-time, in a packed MVM Dome: more than twenty thousand people, the highest figure ever recorded at a women's club handball match. And in the champions' own back yard, since the fixed venue sits 120 kilometres from Győr.

It was the first European title for a French club in this competition, and it came after a perfect weekend: Metz knocked out CSM București in the semi-finals and beat the holders in the final. Sarah Bouktit was named FINAL4 MVP. Győr had arrived with two consecutive finals behind them and after winning theirs against Brest by a single goal, 31-30, on the Saturday.

The season's other number belonged to a player who was not even in Budapest: Henny Reistad, of Team Esbjerg, finished as top scorer with 131 goals. It is a useful reminder that in this competition titles and individual numbers travel separate roads — and that the margin of a final, two goals, looks nothing like the margin of a group-stage game.

How it is decided

Sixteen clubs in two groups of eight, fourteen home-and-away rounds from 5 September 2026 to 20 February 2027. It is a long group stage — longer than many domestic leagues — and that is its quirk: there is plenty of time to correct a bad start, so September surprises rarely survive to February.

Then it narrows sharply. The top two in each group go straight to the quarter-finals; third to sixth play a two-legged play-off first. The quarter-finals are also home and away, and the four survivors reach the FINAL4 in Budapest, where semi-final and final are single matches over one weekend in June.

Worth knowing: this is the last edition under this format. From 2027/28 the EHF moves to four groups of four with an intermediate main round, the same model the men's competition launches now. Anyone following the women's Champions League this season is watching, without knowing it, the end of a way of organising it that has lasted since 2020.

How 2026/27 arrives

Metz defend for the first time, wearing the label Győr have carried since 2013. Facing them are Győr themselves, who have not lost two finals in a row in their entire recent history and arrive with the squad essentially intact.

The chasing group is the deepest the competition has had in years: CSM București, semi-finalists; Brest, a goal away from Budapest; Henny Reistad's Team Esbjerg; Denmark's Odense; Ferencváros; Krim of Ljubljana; Budućnost of Podgorica; Croatia's Podravka. And with them come clubs that widen the map: Germany's Borussia Dortmund and Blomberg-Lippe, Romania's Gloria Bistrița, Nykøbing Falster, and Norway's Sola and Storhamar.

Two notes worth having when predicting. First, elite women's handball scores slightly lower than the men's game: a match in this competition tends to land around sixty goals between the two sides, not seventy. Second, the group stage is long and the big clubs meet twice, so there are fourteen rounds to see how far each squad goes before the serious part begins.