2023–24 AFC Champions League
The 2023–24 AFC Champions League will be the 42nd edition of Asia's premier club football tournament organized by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), and the 21st under the current AFC Champions League title. This season is the first to have an inter-year schedule from September (autumn-to-spring) instead of an intra-year schedule (spring-to-autumn) since the 2002–03 season. This edition sees an increase in numbers of preliminary players with 35 players able to be registered; teams will be able to field six foreign players in games, where one of these players  must still be from another Asian nation. The winners of the tournament will automatically qualify for the 2024–25 AFC Champions League, entering at the qualifying play-off stage, if they have not already qualified through their domestic performance. Association team allocation. The 47 AFC member associations are ranked based on their clubs' performance over the last four years in AFC competitions (their national team's FIFA World Rankings no longer considered). The slots are allocated by the following criteria according to the Entry Manual: Association ranking. For the 2023–24 AFC Champions League, the associations are allocated slots according to their  AFC Club Competitions Ranking which was published on 24 November 2021, which takes into account their performance in the AFC Champions League and the AFC Cup during the period between 2013 and 2021 and their domestic league. Teams. The labels in the parentheses show how each team qualified for the place of its starting round: The tournament is divided into West Region (WR) and East Region (ER). Notes