How Much Do Polish Clubs Earn in European Competitions
In the 2024/25 season Legia Warszawa and Jagiellonia Białystok reached the quarter-final of the Conference League. The UEFA audit showed payments of €10,837,000 for Legia and €9,582,000 for Jagiellonia.
Below we set these amounts against the revenue of Polish clubs, give the reported sums for Lech and Raków from a later season and explain how the country coefficient is linked to access to places in the cups and to the payment mechanism.
Sources and data status: the amounts in the table are marked as either confirmed in the UEFA audit or given according to reports in the Polish sports and trade media. The UEFA report for 2024/25, published in January 2026, is the source for the two confirmed rows. UEFA financial report for the 2024/25 season, Conference League distribution table.
| Club | Season | Amount from UEFA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Legia Warszawa | 2024/25 | €10,837,000 | confirmed (UEFA audit) |
| Jagiellonia Białystok | 2024/25 | €9,582,000 | confirmed (UEFA audit) |
| Lech Poznań | 2025/26 | approx. €9.43m | according to reports |
| Raków Częstochowa | 2025/26 | approx. €9.16m | according to reports |
Legia Warszawa and Jagiellonia Białystok – hard data from 2024/25
For the 2024/25 season Legia Warszawa received a total of €10,837,000 and Jagiellonia Białystok €9,582,000, in line with the official UEFA Conference League distribution table.
Both amounts are the sum of all the elements of the system that we describe in the article on money in the European cups: the starting fee, bonuses for results in the league phase, the table-position bonus, the value pillar and the knockout bonuses.
Both amounts exceed the payment for simply reaching the league phase, which confirms what we know directly from the UEFA table: both clubs reached the quarter-final of the Conference League that season, although neither advanced to the semi-final.
The average payment for clubs that played at least the league phase of the Conference League in the 2024/25 season was €7m (UEFA audited data). Legia and Jagiellonia therefore earned more than that average.
One successful European campaign gave them amounts comparable to what clubs that regularly play in the knockout phase in much richer leagues collect.
Neither Lech Poznań nor Raków Częstochowa appears in any of the three official UEFA distribution tables (Champions League, Europa League, Conference League) for the 2024/25 season; we checked all three in the financial report. Neither of these clubs therefore played the league phase of any of the three cups that season.
The table below sets out all the earnings of Polish clubs from the European cups that we have managed to verify or at least credibly find, together with the status of each figure.
| Club | Season | Competition and stage | Amount from UEFA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Legia Warszawa | 2024/25 | Conference League, quarter-final | €10,837,000 | confirmed (UEFA audit) |
| Jagiellonia Białystok | 2024/25 | Conference League, quarter-final | €9,582,000 | confirmed (UEFA audit) |
| Lech Poznań | 2025/26 | Conference League, round of 16 | approx. €9.43m | according to reports |
| Raków Częstochowa | 2025/26 | Conference League, round of 16 | approx. €9.16m | according to reports |
| Raków Częstochowa | 2023/24 | Europa League (after elimination from the Champions League) | approx. €14m | according to reports |
| Lech Poznań | 2022/23 | Conference League, quarter-final | approx. €8.4m | according to reports |
Only the top two positions in this table are today based on an official, audited UEFA document, and it is on them that we build this article. The remaining four rows are based on reports in the Polish sports media. They will be subject to verification only when UEFA publishes its next financial reports.
What this means against the budget of an Ekstraklasa club
The scale of these amounts is easiest to understand against what Polish clubs earn on their own. The total revenue of all 18 PKO BP Ekstraklasa clubs in the 2024/25 season was, according to sports-business trade data, PLN 1.27 billion, about 9% more than a year earlier (PLN 1.168 billion).
The same sources give the revenue of individual clubs: Legia Warszawa PLN 230.9 million (the highest result in the league), Lech Poznań PLN 145.3 million, Raków Częstochowa PLN 142.9 million, Jagiellonia Białystok PLN 129.2 million.
The trade media report these figures, but they are not audited financial statements of the clubs, so we treat them as indicative, not final. More recent club revenue for the 2025/26 season, from the Grant Thornton report and against the top of the Deloitte ranking, is collected in the overview of the highest revenues of Polish and European clubs.
We deliberately do not convert the amounts in euros (UEFA) and in zlotys (club revenue) from one currency into the other here: a reliable exchange rate would have to be set for a specific day, and nobody has carried out such a conversion here.
Qualitatively, however, it can be looked at this way: of Legia’s entire revenue in the 2024/25 season, about PLN 50 million is, according to the same trade sources, money linked to the European cups (the UEFA distribution plus additional matchday income from the Conference League).
For Jagiellonia it is about PLN 44 million out of about PLN 51 million of total revenue from European competitions, attributed to UEFA’s centralised rights. These are estimates broader than the UEFA distribution amount alone, because they also include, among other things, ticket income from European matches.
They should therefore not be read as a conversion of the confirmed amount of €10.837m or €9.582m into zlotys; they are separate, supplementary data.
We write separately about how much clubs receive from the Ekstraklasa and the Polish Cup.
One good European campaign can rebuild a club’s balance sheet
The scale of money in the European cups is an order of magnitude greater than the budgets of the Polish league, which is why a single campaign weighs so much.
The starting fee alone for reaching the league phase of the Conference League in the UEFA plan for the 2026/27 season (UEFA circular no. 48/2026 of 13 July 2026) is €3.17m, and that is only the starting point, before bonuses for matches won, the table-position bonus and any knockout bonuses are added.
A club that reaches the quarter-final, like Legia and Jagiellonia in 2024/25, ends the season with an amount many times higher than the starting fee alone.
For clubs from outside the continent’s top leagues the European cups are sometimes the moment that changes the financial structure for the following seasons: it lets them pay off liabilities, strengthen the squad without taking on debt or build a financial cushion that regular play in a domestic league cannot provide. A one-off inflow of several million euros often weighs more for such a club than the entire transfer result of the next several windows.
We describe the full mechanism of how much UEFA pays at each stage and why the difference between the three cups is so large in the article on the differences between the Champions League, the Europa League and the Conference League.
Lech Poznań and Raków Częstochowa – a different season, a different scale
Here we have to be precise about the dates: Lech Poznań and Raków Częstochowa reached the league phase of the Conference League only in the 2025/26 season, not 2024/25. This is confirmed, among other things, by the date of Raków’s two-leg tie with ACF Fiorentina in the round of 16 (lost 1:2 on aggregate), played in March 2026, as part of the 2025/26 season.
Lech Poznań and Raków Częstochowa earned in this European campaign, according to reports in the Polish sports media (sport.interia.pl), approximately €9.43m and €9.16m respectively at the round of 16 stage.
These amounts are consistent with the confirmed rate for reaching this round in the official UEFA system, but this is second-hand information, not data from an audited report. UEFA will publish the full, official settlement of the 2025/26 season only about half a year after it ends, most likely at the turn of 2026 and 2027.
Until then, every amount concerning the earnings of Lech and Raków in this season remains in the “according to reports” category, not confirmed.
The same media earlier gave clearly lower amounts for both clubs for the “current season” (Raków €7.9m, Lech €6.28m), most likely data from before the round of 16, published under a different headline at a different point in the season.
We do not combine these two sets of figures, because it is impossible to establish unambiguously which moment of the season each of them refers to. That is why below we use only the higher, later amounts, consistent with reaching the round of 16.
For historical context: the same sources report that Raków Częstochowa earned “almost €14m” from its Europa League campaign in the 2023/24 season (after elimination from the Champions League qualifiers), and Lech Poznań €8.4m for reaching the quarter-final of the Conference League in the 2022/23 season. Both amounts, like those for the 2025/26 season, have the status “according to reports”, not confirmed.
Poland’s coefficient and five places in Europe for 2026/27
The most measurable sign that Polish club football is moving in the right direction financially concerns not one season of one club, but the whole country. Poland’s 5-year country coefficient for the 2021/22–2025/26 seasons is 46.750 points, which gives 12th place in the UEFA ranking, between 11th-placed Greece (48.412 points) and 13th-placed Denmark (42.106 points); the data come from the independent, widely used tracker kassiesa.net, which reflects the published UEFA methodology (the official UEFA website returned a 403 error when we tried to download the data directly while preparing this article).
The same result, 12th place and 46.750 points, is confirmed independently by the Polish sports media, describing it as the best position of Polish club football in years.
This result is the effect of a clear, accelerating trend, visible year after year:
| Season | Poland’s coefficient (points) |
|---|---|
| 2021/22 | 4.625 |
| 2022/23 | 7.750 |
| 2023/24 | 6.875 |
| 2024/25 | 11.750 |
| 2025/26 | 15.750 |
This five-year total decided the move up to 12th place in the country ranking. The data come from the same independent tracker as the final position and have the status “according to reports”, because they were not downloaded directly from the UEFA website.
The consequence is concrete: moving up to 12th place gives Poland five places in the European cups for the 2026/27 season, two in the Champions League qualifiers, one in the Europa League and two in the Conference League.
That is one place more than lower-ranked countries usually get and a real chance that more than two Polish clubs in a given season will fight for entry to the lucrative league phase.
We follow the current schedule and the opponents of Polish teams in these competitions on the page Polish clubs in the European cups 2026/27 (in Polish).
How a higher coefficient translates into real money
A higher country coefficient works in favour of Polish clubs in two ways. First: the higher a country is in the ranking, the more places there are and the later, that is easier, the qualifying round from which a given club starts, so fewer rounds to get through means a greater chance of reaching the lucrative league phase.
Second: a higher position of the country translates into a higher position of that country’s clubs in the European part of the value pillar, because the clubs there are ranked first as a national block and only then ordered among themselves.
We describe this mechanism in the article on the payment mechanism in the European cups.
This mechanism is confirmed directly in UEFA documentation. However, the exact amount in euros by which a higher coefficient raises the payment of a specific Polish club in a specific season has not been confirmed, and we do not try to guess it here. It would require a precise recalculation of the club ranking under two different scenarios of the country coefficient, which nobody has publicly published.
UEFA Solidarity for Poland – national level, not club level
UEFA Solidarity is a separate category of money: funds going to national federations, partly intended for clubs that did not play in the European cups in a given season.
Poland (at the level of the association, not of an individual club) received for the 2024/25 season, according to the official UEFA solidarity table, a total of €11,946,000, including: €3,000,000 of annual HatTrick solidarity, €5,031,000 for clubs not taking part in the cups, €392,000 for a club eliminated in the Champions League qualifiers, €1,429,000 for the club(s) eliminated in the Europa League qualifiers, €1,989,000 for the club(s) eliminated in the Conference League qualifiers and €105,000 for non-participating women’s clubs.
This table is a lump-sum amount for the whole Polish association; UEFA does not publish in it a breakdown by individual clubs, so it is not possible to work out from it how much of this money went directly to, for example, Pogoń Szczecin or Śląsk Wrocław.
We give no individual UEFA amounts here for Pogoń Szczecin and Śląsk Wrocław precisely for this reason: in the available sources, including the official UEFA distribution tables, there are no confirmed or even credibly reported earnings of these clubs from the European cups in the 2024/25 or 2025/26 seasons. We will update this article with specific, verified figures if in future one of these clubs plays the league phase of any European cup.
Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
Exactly how much did Legia Warszawa and Jagiellonia Białystok earn in the 2024/25 Conference League?
Legia Warszawa received a total of €10,837,000 and Jagiellonia Białystok €9,582,000, according to UEFA’s audited financial report for the 2024/25 season. This is confirmed data from the official funds distribution table, covering all elements of the payment system, from the starting fee to the knockout bonuses for reaching the quarter-final.
Did Lech Poznań and Raków Częstochowa also earn money in the Conference League in the 2024/25 season?
Not in that season. Neither of these clubs appears in the official UEFA distribution tables for 2024/25, which means they did not play the league phase of any of the three cups that season. They reached the league phase of the Conference League only in the 2025/26 season, and for now we know their earnings from that campaign only from media reports, not from a UEFA audit.
What is Poland’s coefficient in the UEFA ranking and how many places in the cups does it give?
Poland’s 5-year country coefficient is 46.750 points, which gives 12th place in Europe, the best result of Polish club football in years; this is confirmed by the independent tracker kassiesa.net and by the Polish sports media. It translates into five places in the European cups for the 2026/27 season: two in the Champions League qualifiers, one in the Europa League, two in the Conference League.
Does a higher country coefficient mean higher payments for Polish clubs?
The mechanism points that way: a higher position of the country means fewer qualifying rounds to get through and a higher position of that country’s clubs in the European part of the UEFA value pillar. However, nobody has publicly calculated or confirmed the exact amount of this effect in euros for a specific club. It is a confirmed mechanism, but without a calculated monetary value.
Can UEFA payments be compared directly with the revenue of Ekstraklasa clubs?
Not directly. UEFA payments are given in euros, the revenue of Ekstraklasa clubs is usually reported in zlotys, and converting one currency into the other would require adopting a specific rate from a specific day, which we deliberately do not do here. The scale can be assessed qualitatively: one successful European campaign is sometimes worth as much as a large part of the annual revenue of an average Ekstraklasa club.
How much did Pogoń Szczecin and Śląsk Wrocław earn in the European cups?
We have not managed to find any credible, confirmed or even widely reported amounts for either of these two clubs for the 2024/25 or 2025/26 seasons. We therefore do not assume that either of them played the league phase of a European cup in that period, and we give no estimated figures.
See also how the whole UEFA payment system works in the article money in the European cups, how the three cups differ in practice in the text Champions League, Europa League, Conference League – differences, and what may change from the 2027/28 season in the article the future of the European cups after 2027.
You will find odds and markets for Jagiellonia’s nearest Europa League matches on the page betting on the Europa League (in Polish), and for the matches of Raków and GKS Katowice in the Conference League on the page betting on the Conference League (in Polish).
A full overview of the site’s sports sections can be found on the page Sport – sections and news (in Polish).
See also: how much Lech Poznań and Jagiellonia can earn in the Europa League league phase 2026/27 · UEFA ranking 2026/27 – how the coefficient is calculated and how many places in the cups Poland has.