The 2021–22 European Rugby Champions Cup (known as the Heineken Champions Cup for sponsorship reasons) was the eighth season of the European Rugby Champions Cup, the annual club rugby union competition run by European Professional Club Rugby (EPCR) for teams from the top six nations in European rugby. It was the 27th season of pan-European professional club rugby competition.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 24-team, two pool tournament format adopted for the previous season remained.[2]
This is the final year, under the current sponsorship deal, with Dutch beer brand Heineken, after a four-year deal was agreed starting from the 2018/19 season.[3]
Below is the list of coaches, captain and stadiums with their method of qualification for each team.
Note: Placing shown in brackets, denotes standing at the end of the regular season for their respective leagues, with their end of season positioning shown through CH for Champions, RU for Runner-up, SF for losing Semi-finalist, and QF for losing Quarter-finalist.
The twenty four teams are seeded based on their finishing position in end of season playoffs and league positions. This follows the format from the previous season with the number 1 and number 2 ranked clubs from each league in Tier 1, the number 3 and number 4 ranked clubs in Tier 2, the number 5 and 6 ranked clubs in Tier 3, and the number 7 and number 8 ranked clubs in Tier 4.[7]