How the world ranking works
The short answerThe Beaumont Index puts 3,837 clubs in 228 leagues on one scale. The score starts with how well each club really plays, adjusted for the strength of its league. It then blends in points won, squad strength, continental pedigree, recent form and strength of schedule. 1500 is an average club from Europe's top five leagues.
What goes into the score
It starts with performance. First we rate every league. Clubs from different leagues meet in continental and other cross-league matches, and those results tell us how far apart the leagues are. Then we rate each club against the rest of its own league, using the quality of chances it creates and allows where we have that, and results where we do not. Every game is adjusted for the strength of the opponent. A club's own results in continental competition count too.
Then we blend in five more things. Performance is the biggest part of the score, but it is not everything. On top of it we add, with smaller weights:
- Points. How many points a club takes per game compared with the rest of its league. Results still matter, even when the football says they should be different.
- Squad strength. The value and quality of the players a club actually uses most, compared with its league.
- Continental pedigree. Recent runs in the knockout rounds of continental competitions. Older seasons count for less.
- Form. How the club has been playing recently.
- Schedule. How hard the club's fixtures have been.
How we adjust for the opposition
Who you play matters. A win over the champions says more than a win over the bottom side. So every game is judged against the strength of the opponent: league and continental games count in full, domestic cup games count half. In league games the opponent's level within the league is used; in continental and other cross-league games, its full world rating is used, so results against foreign clubs feed straight in. The estimate is pulled towards the league average until there is enough evidence, and recalculated until it settles.
Three figures you will see. Opponent adjustment is how much this season's rating moved once opponent strength was taken into account: positive means the adjustment moved the club up, usually because it faced stronger opponents than average. Schedule strength is the average rating of the opponents a club has faced this season. Schedule strength against the league is the same figure compared with its league's average: positive means a tougher run of fixtures than usual, negative an easier one.
Our luck figures compare points with the chances in the same games, so they are fair to every schedule.
No single factor can drag a club a long way on its own: extreme values are capped. We made the change because it works better. When we tested the blended score on the following season's continental matches, it picked results slightly better than performance alone, and it matched the next season's league tables slightly better too.
The scale
We show the score on a familiar scale: 1500 is an average club from Europe's top five leagues, and every goal per 90 minutes is worth 180 points. A club rated 1680 would be expected to beat that average side by about a goal a game.
The Beaumont Adjustment
Models miss things. A side can lose its best players in a week, or a takeover can change a club overnight before the data catches up. For those cases we keep a Beaumont Adjustment: a manual correction of between −3 and +3, applied last. It is small. Even the maximum moves a rating by less than 30 points. We use it rarely, and whenever a club has one we say so on its page, with the reason in plain words.
No club has a Beaumont Adjustment in this edition.
The club profile: six pillars
Every club page also has a club profile. It describes what a club is made of, in six pillars. The profile is not scored: it does not change the rating or the rank. It is there to explain the number, not to make it.
- First XI: how good the usual starting eleven is, including its weakest regular starter and how many genuinely top players it has.
- Squad depth: how much quality there is beyond the first eleven.
- Star spread: how evenly quality is shared across the team. A low score means the side leans heavily on one or two stars.
- Club smarts: the club's transfer record. How often signings work out, how much it makes when it sells, and how young it buys.
- Squad age curve: how many of the team's minutes go to players in their peak years, rather than to very young or ageing players.
- Manager: how the team has done under its current head coach, compared with what its squad suggested.
Each pillar is a percentile from 0 to 100, shown twice: against the other clubs in the same league, and against every club in the world. A score of 90 means better than 90% of them. A missing bar means there is not enough data yet, not a low score. Club smarts needs a usable public transfer record, which only a few hundred clubs have. Manager needs enough matches under the current coach.
How sure are we?
Not equally sure about everyone. A Premier League club plays a strong, well-connected league and has a lot of data behind it, so its band is narrow. A club in a league that rarely meets foreign opposition has a much wider band. That is why every club and league carries a rank range: the world ranks its 80% band allows. If a club is 40th with a range of 25th to 60th, read it as "somewhere around 25th to 60th, most likely near 40th". Each club also gets a confidence label of high, medium or low.
Some leagues are marked provisional. That means we think a few clubs may be listed twice or the league's links to the rest of the world are thin. Treat their positions with extra care.
What the ranking is not
It is not a prediction and it is not a table. A club can be well rated and low in its league, or the other way round, because results and performances do not always match. Our luck figures show where they have drifted apart.
Why so many Premier League clubs?
9 of the top 20 clubs in this ranking, and 17 of the top 50, play in the Premier League. It is the first thing most people notice, so here is why we think it is right and how we tested it.
It comes from results, not reputation. The core of a club's score is two things added together: how strong its league is, and how well the club plays within that league. Points, squad strength, pedigree, form and schedule are blended in on top, but with smaller weights. League strength comes from the matches where leagues meet, mainly European competition. On that evidence, the model gives Premier League clubs a league boost worth about 0.6 goals per 90 minutes. That boost, not any judgement about famous names, is why mid-table English sides rate so highly.
Premier League clubs' European results match the boost. If the boost were too big, English clubs would keep falling short of their ratings when they play abroad. They do not. When we look back at matches between clubs from Europe's big five leagues, the league part of the rating explains the results almost one for one. It is not too big and it is not too small.
It predicts the next season better. The hardest test is a forecast. We froze the ratings at the end of a season and used them to predict the following season's Champions League, Europa League and Conference League matches: 883 matches in 2024-25 and 905 in 2025-26. Then we ran the same test with the Premier League boost cut in half, and again with it removed. Both cuts made the forecasts worse, in both seasons. With the full boost the ratings picked the winner of 69.4% and 70.8% of decisive games; with no boost, 68.7% and 69.8%.
Clubs' own European results now count too. Since this week's update, a club's results in continental competition count directly towards its own rating, not just towards its league's strength. That is one reason PSG are now 5th. If Premier League clubs were living off their league's name, this change would have exposed them. It did not: 7 of the top 15 are still English, and over two seasons of test matches the change made the forecasts slightly better in total, worse in the first test season and better in the second.
None of this means every English club is better than every club elsewhere. Bayern München, Barcelona, PSG and Real Madrid are all in the top six. It means that, on the evidence of the games where leagues meet, playing well in the Premier League is very hard, and the ratings reflect that.
Data: Results to 25 Oct 2026. See the world club ranking, the world league ranking and our full methodology.
FAQ
What does a rating of 0 mean?
Zero is an average club from Europe's top five leagues. A club rated +0.50 would be expected to beat that average club by half a goal per 90 minutes; a club rated -1.00 would lose to it by a goal.
Why do you show a rank range?
Every rating is an estimate. The rank range is the spread of world ranks that the club's 80% band allows, so the true rank sits inside it about four times in five.
What goes into a club's score?
Mostly how well the club plays, adjusted for the strength of its league and for the opponents it has faced. Smaller amounts of points won, squad strength, continental pedigree, recent form and strength of schedule are blended in.
How do you compare clubs in different countries?
Leagues are linked by matches between clubs from different leagues. This build uses 23,346 cross-league matches to place 228 leagues on one scale, then rates each club within its league.
Does the club profile change the score?
No. The six pillars describe a club, from its first eleven to its manager. They are not part of the rating or the rank.
What is the Beaumont Adjustment?
A rare manual correction of between −3 and +3, for things the data has not caught up with yet. Any club with one shows it on its page, with the reason.
How often is it updated?
Weekly. This version uses results to 25 oct 2026.
Is this a prediction?
No. Ratings describe how well a club has played. They are not forecasts or betting advice.