UEFA Hits 14 Clubs with Financial Fines as Chelsea, Newcastle, Villa and Juventus Face Sanctions

UEFA has come down hard on 14 clubs for financial misconduct, with the governing body announcing comprehensive sanctions on Tuesday for breaches across the 2025-26 campaign.

The European governing body's Club Financial Control Body has completed its assessment and handed down penalties spanning football earnings violations, squad cost breaches, and inadequate financial reporting. The punishments represent a significant enforcement effort across the continent's elite competitions.

The Football Earnings Rule

Six clubs fell foul of UEFA's football earnings rule—essentially a modernised version of the old break-even regulations—which demands that aggregate football-related losses remain within prescribed limits across a monitoring window. Any shortfall must be plugged by owner investment or equity injections.

Juventus, Newcastle United, OGC Nice, Santa Clara, FC Astana and FK Partizan all failed this test, which was evaluated on a three-year rolling basis covering financial years 2023 through 2025.

Juventus copped a €20 million fine (€14 million conditional), whilst Newcastle received €10 million (€7 million suspended). Both Italian and English clubs have agreed to three-year settlement packages requiring annual compliance milestones, with full adherence expected by summer 2029. They've also been hit with restrictions on List A squad registrations for UEFA competitions—the category where clubs can name up to 25 players, eight of whom must be homegrown.

Should they slip up on targets, consequences could escalate from tighter registration caps to outright exclusion from the next qualifying competition.

Nice and Santa Clara demonstrated their breaches were one-offs rather than systemic, receiving €2 million (€1.7 million conditional) and €1 million (€850,000 suspended) respectively. Astana and Partizan drew smaller penalties of €100,000 and €200,000 for minor infractions.

Squad Cost Squeeze

Nine clubs breached UEFA's squad cost regulations, which cap combined spending on wages, transfers and agent fees at 70% of revenue plus player sale profits.

Aston Villa, Chelsea, Newcastle, Nottingham Forest, Nice, RC Strasbourg, AEK Athens, Fiorentina and Fenerbahce all overstepped the mark during the 2025 calendar year.

Strasbourg faced the heaviest fine at €25 million (€12 million conditional), whilst Villa were handed €22.5 million (€15 million suspended). Both face registration restrictions for next season's European club competition. Fenerbahce received €7 million, Fiorentina €6 million, Chelsea and Newcastle €3 million each, Nottingham Forest €2.5 million, AEK Athens €500,000 and Nice €450,000. Chelsea's package includes €2 million suspended.

UEFA noted that Chelsea and Villa had already faced sanctions previously but demonstrated improving trajectories in their spending ratios.

Bologna and Napoli technically exceeded the 70% threshold but escaped fines after their overages were neutralised by football earnings surpluses.

Additional Sanctions

FK Vardar Skopje received a €250,000 fine for submitting incomplete financial records, with potential exclusion from future UEFA competitions if they repeat the breach within three years.