Champions League final prize money: what Arsenal and PSG stand to earn in Budapest

Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain will contest the Champions League final in Budapest with a combined prize pot running into hundreds of millions of pounds, shaped by UEFA’s overhauled revenue distribution model that spreads roughly £3.8 billion across the competition.

Both clubs began accumulating earnings the moment they qualified for the revamped league phase, each receiving a fixed entry fee of £16.1 million shared equally among all 36 participating clubs. From there, performance bonuses during the league stage created a significant gap between the two finalists. UEFA awards £1.8 million per win and just over £600,000 per draw, and Arsenal’s form at the top of the league-phase table translated into a tournament-high £35 million in performance fees alone — a figure that substantially outpaces PSG’s equivalent earnings from that stage.

The knockout rounds added further layers to both clubs’ totals. Reaching the round of 16 brought £9.5 million, the quarter-finals added £10.8 million, and a place in the semi-finals was worth £13 million. Simply appearing in the final in Budapest has added another £16 million to each club’s tally, meaning both sides have already locked in substantial sums regardless of the result on the night.

The winner will receive an additional £21.7 million on top of everything accumulated to that point. The runner-up collects no extra bonus beyond the £16 million final appearance fee, making the margin between victory and defeat financially significant as well as sporting.

For context, PSG earned £72 million in total prize money after beating Inter Milan 5-0 in last season’s final in Munich, though UEFA noted they left money on the table by not winning every league-phase match.

Victory in Budapest also carries a secondary financial reward: automatic entry to the 2026 UEFA Super Cup, which guarantees the winning club a further £3.5 million participation fee, with an additional £870,000 available if they lift that trophy too.

Beyond the fixed performance structure, 35 percent of the total prize pot is distributed through UEFA’s “value pillar” system, which allocates an estimated £740.6 million based on television broadcast pool revenues and each club’s historical 10-year European coefficient ranking. That element of the distribution runs independently of results in any single season and reflects a club’s sustained continental standing over the previous decade.