2023–24 UEFA Europa League

The 2023–24 UEFA Europa League was the 53rd season of Europe's secondary club football tournament organised by UEFA, and the 15th season since it was renamed from the UEFA Cup to the UEFA Europa League.

The final was played at Aviva Stadium in Dublin, Republic of Ireland, with Italian club Atalanta defeating German club Bayer Leverkusen 3–0 to win their first European title. Atalanta became the first Italian team to win the competition since Parma in 1999. Their win also denied Leverkusen’s bid to win a continental treble and complete the entire season unbeaten across all competitions. As winners of the tournament, Atalanta automatically qualified for the 2024–25 UEFA Champions League league stage and also earned the right to play against Real Madrid, the winners of the 2023–24 UEFA Champions League, in the 2024 UEFA Super Cup, as well as the winners of the 2023 Copa Sudamericana in the 2024 UEFA–CONMEBOL Club Challenge.

This edition was the final season with the current format of 32 teams participating in the group stage, after UEFA announced that a brand new format would be introduced for the following edition. Due to the format change, no clubs can be transferred from the Champions League group stage to the UEFA Europa League under the Swiss format, and this edition's winners onwards will no longer be able to defend the title.

Sevilla were the defending champions, but could not defend their title after being eliminated in the group stage of the 2023–24 UEFA Champions League.

Association team allocation
A total of 57 teams from 34 of the 55 UEFA member associations participated in the 2023–24 UEFA Europa League. Among them, 15 associations had teams directly qualifying for the Europa League, while for the other 40 associations that did not have any teams directly qualifying, 19 of them have teams playing after being transferred from the Champions League (the only member association which could not have a participant was Liechtenstein, which did not organise a domestic league, and could only enter their cup winner into the Europa Conference League given their association ranking). The association ranking based on the UEFA country coefficients was used to determine the number of participating teams for each association:
 * The title holders of the UEFA Europa Conference League were given an entry in the Europa League (if they did not qualify for the Champions League through league performance).
 * Associations 1–5 each had two teams qualify.
 * Associations 6–16 (except Russia) each had one team qualify.
 * 36 teams eliminated from the 2023–24 UEFA Champions League were transferred to the Europa League.

Association ranking
For the 2023–24 UEFA Europa League, the associations were allocated places according to their 2022 UEFA country coefficients, which took into account their performance in European competitions from 2017–18 to 2021–22.

Apart from the allocation based on the country coefficients, associations could have additional teams participating in the Europa League, as noted below:
 * (UCL) – Additional teams transferred from the UEFA Champions League
 * (UECL) – Additional berth for UEFA Europa Conference League title holders

Distribution
The following is the access list for this season.

Due to the suspension of Russia for the 2023–24 European season, the following changes to the access list were made:
 * The cup winners of associations 13 (Belgium) and 14 (Switzerland) entered the play-off round instead of the third qualifying round.
 * The cup winners of association 16 (Czech Republic) entered the third qualifying round instead of the Europa Conference League second qualifying round.

Teams
The labels in the parentheses show how each team qualified for the place of its starting round:
 * ECL: Europa Conference League title holders
 * CW: Cup winners
 * 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc.: League position of the previous season


 * UCL: Transferred from the Champions League
 * GS: Third-placed teams from the group stage
 * CH/LP PO: Losers from the play-off round (Champions/League Path)
 * CH/LP Q3: Losers from the third qualifying round (Champions/League Path)
 * CH/LP Q2: Losers from the second qualifying round (Champions/League Path)

The third qualifying round was divided into Champions Path (CH) and Main Path (MP).

Notes

Schedule
The schedule of the competition was as follows. Matches were scheduled for Thursdays apart from the final, which took place on a Wednesday, though exceptionally could take place on Tuesdays or Wednesdays due to scheduling conflicts.

Group stage
The draw for the group stage was held on 1 September 2023, 13:00 CEST, in Monaco. The 32 teams were drawn into eight groups of four. For the draw, the teams were seeded into four pots each of eight teams, based on their club coefficients. As the winners of the 2022–23 UEFA Europa Conference League, West Ham United entered Pot 1 regardless of their club coefficient (CC). Teams from the same association could not be drawn into the same group.

Aris Limassol, Brighton & Hove Albion, BK Häcken, Raków Częstochowa, Servette and TSC made their debut appearances in the group stage and their debut appearances in a UEFA competition group stage. Furthermore, Brighton & Hove Albion qualified for European football for the first time in their history.

A total of 21 national associations were represented in the group stage.

Knockout phase
In the knockout phase, teams played against each other over two legs on a home-and-away basis, except for the one-match final.

Statistics
Statistics exclude qualifying rounds and play-off round.

Team of the Season
The UEFA technical study group selected the following players as the team of the tournament.

Player of the Season

 * 🇬🇦 Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang ( Marseille)

Young Player of the Season

 * 🇩🇪 Florian Wirtz ( Bayer Leverkusen)