Barcelona's favourite status revisited in Women's Champions League ranking

A power ranking for this season's UEFA Women's Champions LeagueChampions LeagueEurope was published on 18 September 2026, and it returns to a familiar question: whether BarcelonaBarcelonaLaLiga · Spain1st POS31–1–6 W-D-L are the team to beat again. The assessment frames the campaign as a stronger edition of the competition and asks which clubs can realistically win it.

Power rankings are an editorial exercise, not a competition standing. They compare teams on perceived strength, squad quality and recent form at a given moment, and they carry no weight in the tournament itself: no points, no seeding and no influence on who lifts the trophy. Their value is in the argument they start.

Barcelona's place at the centre of that argument is the substantive part. Framing the question as "again" implies the club has held the status of favourite in a recent season, and that the ranking sees a case for that status returning. That is a claim about expectation rather than results, and nothing in the ranking changes what happens once matches begin.

2025/26

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POS

1st

W-D-L

31–1–6

GF

95

GA

36

Season 2025/26

What the ranking leaves open

Giovanni Batista Rodriguez from San Sebastian-Donostia, España · CC BY-SA 2.0

The ranking raises the question without resolving it: no order of merit has been set out, no criteria for the assessment are given, and no other contender is named. No club and no governing body has commented on it.

• Which clubs sit behind Barcelona in the assessment, and in what order.
• The basis on which the teams were compared.
• When the coming season's matches begin and how the rounds are structured.
• Whether UEFA or any competing club responds to the ranking.

Why a favourites tag matters

Ank Kumar · CC BY-SA 4.0

A favourites tag carries no points, but it shapes the conversation around a tournament. It sets the terms in which a club is discussed before a ball is kicked, gives its rivals a benchmark to be measured against, and colours what counts as a satisfactory campaign. For the club placed in that position, the label is a burden as much as an endorsement.

The claim doing the most work in the ranking's framing — that this will be the best edition of the competition yet — is promotional rather than measurable. Whether it holds depends on the football: on how close the ties are, on the depth of the field and on whether the gap between the leading clubs and the rest narrows. None of that can be known in September.

What happens next

The ranking will be tested once the competition starts, and until then it functions as a prediction rather than a finding. The next concrete developments are confirmation of the season's calendar and the opening fixtures, followed by the first results that either support the assessment or undercut it. Barcelona have not responded to the ranking.