Asia's top club competition keeps reinventing itself, name and format alike
Asia's premier club tournament has worn at least three names, vanished for 14 years, and swung between 24, 32 and 40 clubs in its main stage. Today it is the AFC Champions League Elite, a two-region league that ends in a centralised finals tournament. Saudi giants Al-Hilal have won it most, four times.
The idea surfaced at an Asian Football Confederation meeting on 21 April 1963, when secretary Lee Wai Tong announced plans for something like the European Cup. It launched in 1967 as the Asian Champion Club Tournament, trying a straight knockout and then group formats. After the 1972 edition was cancelled, the competition was suspended for 14 years, returning in 1985 as the Asian Club Championship.
Side events multiplied. A Cup Winners' Cup arrived in 1990 and a Super Cup pitting the two champions against each other in 1995. For 2002–03 all three merged into the AFC Champions League, and Al-Ain were the first winners under that name, beating BEC Tero Sasana 2–1 on aggregate. Syrian clubs joined in 2005, and Australian teams followed two years later after their country switched confederations. The field grew to 32 clubs in 2009 and to 40 in 2021, with matches kept within East and West regions until the final, which was played over two legs from 2013.
A major overhaul was announced in December 2022. The season moved to an autumn-to-spring calendar from 2023–24, the limit on foreign players rose, and in 2024 the competition took its current name with just 24 clubs in the main stage. From 2026–27 that stage expanded again to 32, split evenly between East and West. Each side plays eight regional opponents, four at home and four away; the top eight in each league meet in a two-legged round of 16, and the last eight gather at one venue for single-match knockout rounds.
The winner earns places at the FIFA Club World Cup and Intercontinental Cup. The reigning holders are Al-Ahli, who retained the title in 2026 with a 1–0 win over Japan's Machida Zelvia. Their prize is a trophy by Thomas Lyte, 70 centimetres tall and weighing 12 kilograms.
Source: AFC Champions League Elite
