How Much Can Lech and Jagiellonia Earn in the Europa League 2026/27

In the 2026/27 season Lech Poznań and Jagiellonia Białystok are the only Polish clubs in a UEFA league phase. Both play in the Europa League and both were drawn from Pot 3.

The UEFA plan provides for a €4.31m starting fee for every club that qualifies for the league phase. Over eight matches a win is worth €450k and a draw €150k. The payout also includes a bonus for league-table position, the value pillar and bonuses for reaching the later rounds.

As of 30 October 2026, after three of the eight league-phase matchdays. Schedule, opponents, results and draw: based on UEFA.com; amounts and payout mechanism: based on UEFA circular no. 48/2026 of 13 July 2026.

The starting fee in the UEFA plan

The starting fee in the UEFA plan is due to every club that qualifies for the 36-team Europa League league phase.

According to UEFA circular no. 48/2026 of 13 July 2026, each of the 36 clubs taking part in the league phase receives €4.31m for this, paid in two instalments: a down-payment of €4.14m (paid in September, with the start of the competition) and a balance payment of €170k (settled after the end of the season, in October 2027).

The planned amount does not depend on sporting results. It covers each of the 36 league-phase participants, including a club that loses all eight matches. UEFA also stipulates that the entire distribution plan for the 2026/27 season is provisional.

The amounts are “subject to final confirmation by UEFA and cannot be considered as guaranteed income until further notice”.

The starting fee is one of the three “pillars” of the payout system, alongside the results part and the value pillar.

We describe this whole mechanism, common to all three UEFA competitions, in detail in the article on where the money UEFA pays to clubs comes from in the first place.

In the Europa League the proportions between the pillars are 27.5% starting fee, 37.5% results part and 35% value pillar. Of the whole pool of €565m that will go to Europa League clubs in the 2026/27 season, €155m goes on the starting fees of all 36 participants alone.

Neither of the two clubs reached the league phase by the shortest route. Lech Poznań reached the Europa League after a dramatic two-legged Champions League qualifying tie against Denmark’s Aarhus (a 4:1 win away, a 1:4 defeat at home after extra time, 0:3 after 90 minutes, 5:5 on aggregate, elimination 3:4 on penalties), and later beat KI Klaksvík and FC Thun in the Europa League. Jagiellonia, for their part, got past Rangers FC and FC Iberia 1999 Tbilisi.

How much each match is worth

From the moment the league phase starts, the second part of the system comes into play: bonuses for results. According to UEFA circular no. 48/2026 of 13 July 2026, in the Europa League a club receives €450k for every win and €150k for every draw in the eight league-phase matches.

With a draw, not the whole amount goes directly to the two clubs as a match bonus. The part that “was not distributed” in this way returns to the pool and proportionally increases the value of the shares in the league-table position bonus, described in the next section. A draw always brings something – just not always entirely in the form of a match bonus.

The table shows example bonuses for different records over the eight matches. This is arithmetic at UEFA’s rates, not a forecast for either club or a description of their results.

These are examples only. In a given scenario, with exactly that record, a club would collect the stated amount from match bonuses alone, calculated in the simplest way: €450k times the number of wins plus €150k times the number of draws.

To each of these sums you must add the €4.31m starting fee (which the club has regardless of the result) and the league-table position bonus. The size of this bonus, unlike the match bonuses, cannot be calculated in advance – it depends on where the club finally finishes among the other 35 teams.

The bonus for position in the 36-team table

The third element of the results part is a bonus that depends solely on the final position in the 36-team league-phase table.

UEFA circular no. 48/2026 of 13 July 2026 describes the 666-share mechanism: the bonus pool is divided into 1+2+3+…+35+36 = 666 equal parts, the last team in the table gets one share, the second-to-last two, and so on up to the league-phase leader, who takes 36 shares.

The base value of a single share in the Europa League for the 2026/27 season is €75k. Part of the amounts not used up on draws is, however, added to precisely this pool, so the real value of a share at the end of the season may turn out slightly higher than the base €75k.

On top of this come two additional thresholds: clubs that finish the league phase in places 1–8 receive an extra €600k, and those in places 9–16 a further €300k. Places 17–36 do not qualify for either of these two extras, although they still receive their share of the basic league-table position bonus.

This element of the system deliberately cannot be calculated in advance, either for Lech or for Jagiellonia. The value of a share depends on the sum of the amounts saved from draws across the whole field of 36 clubs, and the league-table position itself depends on the results of all 36 teams, not just the two Polish sides.

Only after the eighth matchday, on 28 January 2027, will it be known where each club finishes the league phase. Only then can this part of the payout be calculated.

What comes next – the knockout phase

Eight places in the league-phase table (1–8) give direct qualification for the round of 16, the next sixteen (9–24) go into the knockout phase play-offs, and places 25–36 end the club’s participation in the competition this season. Each further step in the knockout phase has a fixed amount assigned to it, independent of how much the club earned earlier in the league phase.

According to UEFA circular no. 48/2026 of 13 July 2026, the ladder looks like this: reaching the knockout phase play-offs – €300k; reaching the round of 16 – €1.75m; reaching the quarter-final – €2.5m; reaching the semi-final – €4.2m; reaching the final – €7m.

The winner of the whole Europa League receives an additional €6m on top of the amount for reaching the final.

The amounts for successive rounds accumulate: a club that reaches the semi-final will also receive the bonuses for the earlier rounds. These are UEFA’s rates, not a forecast of the results of Lech or Jagiellonia.

The value pillar

The third and last pillar of the system is the so-called value pillar, the most technical and hardest to predict element of the entire distribution.

In the Europa League the value pillar is €198m of the whole €565m pool, divided into two parts: European and non-European, in a proportion set on the basis of the actual sales of media rights to the Europa League/Conference League package.

Both parts are distributed, like the league-table position bonus, in the 666-share system. The ranking by which the shares are awarded, however, has nothing to do with the sporting results of the current season.

In the European part a club’s position is decided by its country’s contribution to European media revenues and by UEFA’s 5-year club coefficient; in the non-European part solely by the 10-year club coefficient.

The base value of one share is €217k in the European part and €80k in the non-European part.

The value pillar therefore cannot be calculated in advance for any club, including Lech or Jagiellonia. It depends on rankings based on club coefficients and on the media-market contributions of the whole field of 36 teams, not on what a particular club does on the pitch this season.

Schedule of both clubs

Below is the full schedule of the eight league-phase matchdays for both Polish clubs, based on UEFA.com data. After three matchdays (as of 30 October 2026) Jagiellonia have 3 points (a 1:2 defeat to Olympiacos, a 3:1 win over Ararat-Armenia, a 0:3 defeat to Anderlecht), and Lech 1 point (a 0:4 defeat to Crystal Palace, a 0:4 defeat to Bayer Leverkusen, a 1:1 draw with Sunderland). You will find the kick-off times of individual matches on UEFA.com and on the clubs’ websites.

Lech Poznań

Jagiellonia Białystok

One to watch: Sunderland meet both Polish clubs in this league phase: they drew 1:1 with Lech in Poznań on 22 October, and Jagiellonia play them on 26 November away, in England.

Crystal Palace, in turn, face both sides one after the other: they beat Lech 4:0 on the opening matchday (17 September) and play Jagiellonia on matchday six (10 December, in Białystok).

You will find a full description of the opponents and of both clubs’ qualifying route in the article on Polish clubs in the European competitions in the 2026/27 season (in Polish).

Frequently asked questions

What is the starting fee for a club that qualifies for the 2026/27 Europa League league phase?

The starting fee is €4.31m: €4.14m down-payment plus €170k balance payment, paid regardless of sporting result. This amount is due to both Lech Poznań and Jagiellonia Białystok, because both clubs qualified for the 36-team league phase.

How much does a club get for a win and how much for a draw in the Europa League league phase?

€450k for a win and €150k for a draw, in each of the eight league-phase matches. The part of the amount attributable to draws that is not distributed as a match bonus goes proportionally into the pool of the league-table position bonus.

Can the full payout of Lech Poznań and Jagiellonia Białystok be calculated in advance?

Not in full. The starting fee and the bonuses for specific match results can be calculated right away, because they are fixed amounts. The bonus for position in the 36-team table and the value pillar, however, cannot be worked out in advance – both amounts depend on the final league-phase table and on rankings based on the club coefficients of the whole field, not just on the results of one team.

What happens if a club is eliminated in the league phase and does not advance?

Nothing is “lost”. The club keeps everything it has earned up to that point: the starting fee, the bonuses for all the league-phase matches played, and its share of the league-table position bonus, resulting from its final position. The knockout-phase bonuses (from the play-offs upwards) apply only to clubs that actually advance to that stage.

How much is progress through the later rounds of the Europa League knockout phase worth?

The ladder looks like this: knockout phase play-offs – €300k; round of 16 – €1.75m; quarter-final – €2.5m; semi-final – €4.2m; final – €7m; and the winner of the whole competition receives an additional €6m on top of the amount for reaching the final.

Where do the amounts given in this article come from?

All the amounts and payout mechanisms come from UEFA circular no. 48/2026 of 13 July 2026, the official distribution plan for the 2026/27 season. The schedule, opponents and draw result come from UEFA.com.

We write about where the whole UEFA pool comes from and how it is split between the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League in the article on the differences between the three UEFA competitions.

We write about the audited, already settled earnings of Polish clubs in previous seasons, in turn, in the article on how much Polish clubs earn in Europe.

You will find odds and betting markets for the league-phase matches of both Polish clubs on the page Europa League betting (in Polish).

See also: UEFA ranking 2026/27 – how the coefficient is calculated and how many places in the cups Poland has.

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