Copa Libertadores Format Explained: Groups, Knockouts and the Final
South America's biggest club competition runs on a format that mixes a long group-stage grind with a single-elimination sprint to the title. Here's exactly how it works, from the opening group matches to the final in Montevideo.
32 Clubs, Eight Groups
The group stage splits 32 clubs into eight groups of four, each playing a home-and-away round robin — six matches per team. The top two in each group advance to the round of 16; the third-place finisher drops into the Copa Sudamericana knockout rounds instead of being eliminated outright, and the last-place team is out of both competitions.
Getting to the group stage at all is its own gauntlet for many clubs: three rounds of two-legged qualifiers whittle down dozens of hopefuls from across CONMEBOL's ten federations before the group stage draw even happens.
From the Round of 16 to the Final
Once the group stage ends, it's straight knockout: round of 16, quarterfinals, semifinals, then the final — all two-legged home-and-away ties except the final itself.
That's a meaningful structural difference from Europe's Champions League, which has run a single-table league phase since 2024. The Libertadores has kept its groups-into-bracket format essentially unchanged for decades.
A Single-Match Final Since 2019
Until 2018, the final was played home-and-away like every other round — a format that produced the infamous 2018 Boca Juniors-River Plate final, delayed and eventually relocated to Madrid after crowd violence outside La Bombonera.
From 2019 onward, CONMEBOL switched to a single match at a pre-selected neutral venue, mirroring how the Champions League and Copa Sudamericana finals are staged. It also means the win-or-lose stakes of a Libertadores final now come down to 90 (or 120) minutes, not an aggregate score over two legs.
CONMEBOL, Not Just South America
The tournament is organized by CONMEBOL, the South American football confederation, and its 32 Libertadores group-stage berths are split across all ten CONMEBOL member federations by a quota system tied to each country's league strength — Brazil and Argentina get the most spots, smaller footballing nations fewer.
The Libertadores champion and the Copa Sudamericana champion (CONMEBOL's second-tier club competition) then meet in a separate one-off match, the Recopa Sudamericana, early the following year.