Off-season changes & summary
Originally, the 2020/21 Champions Hockey League season was set to remain unchanged from the previous three seasons, but on 13 October 2020, the entire upcoming season was cancelled due to the global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
A total of 32 teams qualified for 2020/21 from 12 different countries – 24 teams from the six founding leagues, as well as the National Champions of Norway, Denmark, France, Belarus, United Kingdom and Poland from the Challenger Leagues. The last two qualification places were awarded to Belarusian team Neman Grodno (as the best ranked Regular season Runners-up in the Challenger Leagues) and the IIHF Continental Cup Winners, SønderjyskE Vojens.
Three teams were set to make their debut – Straubing Tigers (GER), Ilves Tampere (FIN) and Rögle Ängelholm (SWE).
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic there were notable changes to the league's normal schedule and structure:
- 28 April 2020 - it was announced that the start of the season will be postponed until 6 October (previous start date 3 September) and will forfeit the Group Stage and immediately commence as a knockout only series, starting with the Round of 32.
- 8 September 2020 – the season start was further postponed to 17 November due to the uncertainty caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and related travel restrictions between participating countries.
- 13 October 2020 – as the general situation in Europe had not improved, the CHL board was forced to make the difficult decision of cancelling the entire 2020/21 season. Travel restrictions, health risks for the participating teams, as well as operational and economical challenges for both the league and the participating teams made this step unavoidable.