2025–26 UEFA Women's Nations League

The 2025–26 UEFA Women's Nations League will be the second season of the UEFA Women's Nations League, an international women's football competition contested by the senior women's national teams of the member associations of UEFA. The league phase of the competition will be played between September and December 2025, with the finals tournament taking place in February 2026. The results also determines the leagues for the FIFA Women's World Cup 2027 qualifying competition.

Format
The competition will begin with the league stage, featuring the national teams split into three leagues (A, B, and C) based on the UEFA Women's Euro 2025 qualifying ranking. Leagues A and B features 16 teams in four groups of four teams, while League C consists of the remaining competition entrants split into groups of three or four teams.

The teams in each group plays against each other home-and-away in a round-robin format. The four group winners of League A advances to the Nations League Finals, which features single-leg semi-finals, a third-place play-off, and final. An open draw determines the pairings and home teams for the semi-final matches, as well as which semi-final will have its teams host the third-place play-off and final.

In addition, the competition features promotion and relegation, taking effect in FIFA Women's World Cup 2027 qualifying (which uses an identical league structure). The group winners of Leagues B and C are automatically promoted, while the fourth-placed teams in Leagues A and B, as well as the lowest-ranked third-placed team in League B, are automatically relegated. Promotion/relegation matches will also held on a home-and-away basis, taking place in parallel with the Nations League Finals, to determine which teams would promoted, relegated or remain in their respective leagues. The third-placed teams of League A plays the runners-up of League B, while the three best-ranked third-placed teams in League B plays the three best-ranked League C runners-up. The teams from the higher leagues are seeded, and plays the second leg at home. In the two-legged ties, the team that scored more goals on aggregate is the winner. If the aggregate score was level, extra time will be played (the away goals rule was not applied). If the score remained level after extra time, a penalty shoot-out will be used to decide the winner.

Tiebreakers for group ranking
If two or more teams in the same group are equal on points on completion of the league phase, the following tie-breaking criteria are applied:


 * 1) Higher number of points obtained in the matches played among the teams in question;
 * 2) Superior goal difference in matches played among the teams in question;
 * 3) Higher number of goals scored in the matches played among the teams in question;
 * If, after having applied criteria 1 to 3, teams still have an equal ranking, criteria 1 to 3 are reapplied exclusively to the matches between the teams in question to determine their final rankings. If this procedure does not lead to a decision, criteria 5 to 11 apply;
 * 1) Superior goal difference in all group matches;
 * 2) Higher number of goals scored in all group matches;
 * 3) Higher number of away goals scored in all group matches;
 * 4) Higher number of wins in all group matches;
 * 5) Higher number of away wins in all group matches;
 * 6) Lower disciplinary points total in all group matches (1 point for a single yellow card, 3 points for a red card as a consequence of two yellow cards, 3 points for a direct red card, 4 points for a yellow card followed by a direct red card).
 * 7) Position in the UEFA Women's Euro 2025 qualifying ranking.

Seeding
Russia are not permitted to enter the competition, as Russian teams are suspended indefinitely from UEFA and FIFA competitions since 28 February 2022 due to their country's invasion of Ukraine.

For political reasons, Armenia and Azerbaijan (due to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict), as well as Belarus and Ukraine (due to the Belarusian involvement in the Russian invasion of Ukraine), could not be drawn in the same group. Due to winter venue restrictions, a group could contain a maximum of two of Sweden, Norway, and Iceland in League A, and two of Estonia, the Faroe Islands, Latvia, and Lithuania in League C.