2024–25 European Rugby Champions Cup

The 2024–25 European Rugby Champions Cup (known as the 2024–25 Investec Champions Cup for sponsorship reasons) was the eleventh season of the European Rugby Champions Cup, the annual club rugby union competition run by European Professional Club Rugby (EPCR) for professional clubs. It was the 30th season of the pan-European professional club rugby competition and the second season in which Investec are named as title sponsors.

For the first time since its 1995 founding (as the Heineken Cup), no Welsh teams are playing in the ERCC, as none of them finished in the top seven of the 2023–24 United Rugby Championship. The final will be played at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, Wales.

Toulouse entered the competition as defending champions, seeking a record-extending seventh title, but fell in the semi final to French rivals Bordeaux Bègles. Leinster, beaten finalists in the past three editions, sought a record fourth consecutive final, and to become the second team after Toulouse to win a fifth Champions Cup, but lost to English champions and former European champions Northampton Saints, also in the semi-final.

Bordeaux Bègles won the final, beating Northampton Saints 28–20 for their first title.

Teams

Twenty-four clubs from the three major European domestic and regional leagues qualified for the 2024–25 edition of the Champions Cup.

The distribution of teams was:
* England: eight clubs
** The top eight clubs from the 2023–24 Premiership.
* France: eight clubs
** The top eight clubs from the 2023–24 Top 14. The European champions, Toulouse qualified in the top eight of the French league.
* Ireland, Italy, Scotland and South Africa: eight clubs
** The top seven sides from the 2023–24 United Rugby Championship.
** The champions of the 2023–24 Challenge Cup (Sharks), who displaced the eighth-placed side in the URC ( Ospreys) to take the final qualification spot.

Team details

Below is the list of coaches, captain and stadiums with their method of qualification for each team.

Note: Placing shown in brackets, denotes standing at the end of the regular season for their respective leagues, with their end of season positioning shown through CH for Champions, RU for Runner-up, SF for losing Semi-finalist, and QF for losing Quarter-finalist.

Pool stage

Teams were drawn into pools in Cardiff on 2 July 2024. Teams are awarded four points for a win, two for a draw, one for scoring four tries in a game, and one for losing by less than eight points.

The format is, once again, a modified round robin. Each pool consists of six teams, two from each of the three contributing leagues. Each team plays the four teams not from its own league once, with one game away to each league and one game at home. Teams do not play their league partners at this stage. The top four teams go to the first knock out round, where the top two teams in each group are given home advantage. The fifth placed teams 'drop' into the Challenge Cup knockout rounds, joining twelve clubs from that competition's pool stages in the knockout stage as the ninth to twelfth seeds, earning away ties with the fifth-to eighth-ranked sides from the Challenge Cup's pool stage. The sixth placed team in each group is eliminated.

Pool 1

Pool 2

Pool 3

Pool 4

Knockout stage

The knockout stage follows the same format as used in previous years, which begins with a single-leg round of 16, starting on 4 April 2025. This round is followed by the quarter-finals and semi-finals, before the tournament concludes with the final at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff on 24 May 2025.

All clubs are thereafter ranked in descending order, based firstly on their ranking in their pool, and subsequently on the number of competition points they have accumulated, to create an overall ranking from 1 to 16. The pool winners are ranked 1 to 4, the second-placed clubs are ranked 5 to 8, the third-placed clubs are ranked 9 to 12, and the fourth-placed clubs are ranked 13 to 16.

Whilst the round of 16 follows a pre-determined format, the quarter-finals see home advantage given to the higher ranked team, based on a pre-determined match-up. As such the teams seeded 1 to 4 are guaranteed home advantage in they reach the quarter-final, and teams seeded 13 to 16 are guaranteed an away fixture if they do so. Whether a team ranked from 5 to 12 will play home or away will depend on other results in their section of the bracket.

At the semi-final stage, the higher ranked team has 'home country' advantage, with the match to be played in a suitably-sized stadium in their home union's territory, but not necessarily their own normal home stadium.

Seeding

Bracket

Round of 16

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Quarter-finals

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Semi-finals

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Final

Leading scorers

Note: Flags to the left of player names indicate national team as has been defined under World Rugby eligibility rules, or primary nationality for players who have not yet earned international senior caps. Players may hold one or more non-WR nationalities.

At the end of the final, winger Damian Penaud, winner of the competition and author of a new record of fourteen tries scored in the competition, is named best player of the 2024-2025 Champions Cup.

Most points

Source:

Most tries

Source:

Discipline

Citings/bans

Notes:

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:2024-25 Champions Cup
Champions Cup
European Rugby Champions Cup seasons