That’s it for UEFA Champions League football in 2025 – Matchday 6 of the 2025-26 league phase brought the curtain down on the action for this year. But it’s only an intermission.
There are two matchdays to go in the 2025-26 league phase, and they’ll be played on consecutive weeks in January. The final matchday will see all 18 matches take place at the same time on Wednesday 28 January 2026 – and it’ll be chaos.
So, there’s still lots to play for and plenty of time for twists and turns.
But following the MD6 action and ahead of the UCL’s nearly six-week hiatus, we figured it was a good a time as any to revisit the Opta supercomputer’s projections, looking specifically at the league phase.
Who’s pretty much through? Who’s pretty much out? Who’s facing a tense final two matchdays? Let’s dive into it.
The Top Eight
After their comfortable 3-0 win away to Club Brugge on Wednesday, Arsenal are as good as through to the last 16 – if that wasn’t already the case.
They are the only remaining club with a 100% record, becoming just the fourth English team to ever win their first six matches of a Champions League campaign.
Mikel Arteta’s men finished in the top eight in 100% of the supercomputer’s latest 10,000 simulations, but it should be noted that doesn’t mean they are guaranteed to progress; if they were to lose their final two games and all eight of the teams directly below them took maximum points, Arsenal’s progress to the last 16 as one of the top eight would come down to their goal difference.
Currently, their goal difference is 14 better than fifth-placed Atalanta’s, and 13 better than Atlético Madrid’s in eighth. So, while 100% in the sims doesn’t mean it’s a certainty, it absolutely reflects how there’s practically no chance Arsenal miss out.
After all, Arsenal have been so good this season that a three-point cushion over Bayern Munich translated to finishing top of the league phase in 95.3% of the simulations – compare that to 4.3% for the German champions, 0.3% for Paris Saint-Germain, 0.1% for Manchester City and 0.01% for Atalanta (yes, that means they came top once out of 10,000 tries).
But there are seven other automatic spots up for grabs in the round of 16, crucially skipping the potential banana skin – and two extra games – of the play-off round. Like Arsenal, Bayern are practically through already (99.2%), while City (89.5%) and PSG (83.6%) can probably consider themselves safe as well.
Otherwise, though, there’s a lot still at stake.