Real Madrid vs Liverpool records: the full head-to-head and every meeting

Real Madrid and Liverpool have never shared a league, a cup or a country, and every competitive match they have ever played has come in the same competition — the European Cup and its successor, the Champions League. That is 13 meetings in 45 years, and three of the 13 were finals.

Real Madrid lead the head-to-head 7-5, with one draw. This page has the full record: by competition, match by match, the biggest wins, every goalscorer, the three finals, and where the two clubs stand going into 2026-27. Figures are current to 12 August 2026, and the last meeting was at Anfield on 4 November 2025.

They may not have to wait long for the next one. Both clubs are in the 2026-27 Champions League and the league-phase draw is on Thursday 27 August 2026. There is a section at the foot of the page on why this fixture, once a rarity, now turns up almost every season.

Real Madrid vs Liverpool head-to-head record in all competitions

Across all 13 meetings Real Madrid have won seven, Liverpool five, and one was drawn. The Real Madrid and Liverpool columns below are wins.

Competition	Played	Real Madrid	Liverpool	Drawn
European Cup	1	0	1	0
Champions League	12	7	4	1
All meetings	13	7	5	1

The two rows are the same tournament under two names. The European Cup was rebranded as the Champions League in 1992, and the 1981 final is the only meeting that pre-dates the change. Real Madrid have scored 17 goals in the fixture to Liverpool’s 13 — 30 in 13 matches.

Every Real Madrid vs Liverpool match, result by result

All 13 meetings in order. Six came in three two-legged knockout ties, two in a group campaign, two in the league phase, and three were one-off finals.

Date	Competition and stage	Result
27 May 1981	European Cup final, Paris	Liverpool 1-0 Real Madrid
25 February 2009	Champions League last 16, 1st leg	Real Madrid 0-1 Liverpool
10 March 2009	Champions League last 16, 2nd leg	Liverpool 4-0 Real Madrid
22 October 2014	Champions League group stage	Liverpool 0-3 Real Madrid
4 November 2014	Champions League group stage	Real Madrid 1-0 Liverpool
26 May 2018	Champions League final, Kyiv	Real Madrid 3-1 Liverpool
6 April 2021	Champions League QF, 1st leg	Real Madrid 3-1 Liverpool
14 April 2021	Champions League QF, 2nd leg	Liverpool 0-0 Real Madrid
28 May 2022	Champions League final, Saint-Denis	Liverpool 0-1 Real Madrid
21 February 2023	Champions League last 16, 1st leg	Liverpool 2-5 Real Madrid
15 March 2023	Champions League last 16, 2nd leg	Real Madrid 1-0 Liverpool
27 November 2024	Champions League league phase	Liverpool 2-0 Real Madrid
4 November 2025	Champions League league phase	Liverpool 1-0 Real Madrid

Read down the result column and the record falls into three blocks rather than a steady drip. Liverpool won the first three meetings — the 1981 final and both legs in 2009. Real Madrid then won seven of the next eight over eight and a half years, the exception a goalless draw at Anfield in April 2021. And Liverpool have won the last two.

The gaps are as striking as the results. Real Madrid and Liverpool did not play each other once between the 1981 final and February 2009, a span of nearly 28 years. They have now met in three of the last four seasons.

Venue tells its own story. Six of the 13 were at Anfield, where Liverpool have won three, lost two and drawn one. Four were in Madrid, where Liverpool have won once — the first leg at the Bernabeu in February 2009 — and lost three, including the April 2021 quarter-final played at the Estadio Alfredo Di Stefano while the Bernabeu was being rebuilt. The other three were finals on neutral ground, and Real Madrid have won two of those.

Three European Cup finals, more than any other pairing

The fixture’s real distinction is not the 7-5. It is that no two clubs in the history of the competition have met in the final as often.

Season	Venue	Result	Scorers
1980-81	Parc des Princes, Paris	Liverpool 1-0 Real Madrid	Alan Kennedy 82′
2017-18	NSC Olimpiyskiy, Kyiv	Real Madrid 3-1 Liverpool	Benzema 51′, Bale 64′, 83′; Mane 55′
2021-22	Stade de France, Saint-Denis	Real Madrid 1-0 Liverpool	Vinicius Junior 59′

There have been 71 European Cup and Champions League finals. Eight pairings have met twice in one — Real Madrid and Reims, Milan and Benfica, Milan and Ajax, Ajax and Juventus, Milan and Liverpool, Real Madrid and Juventus, Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid, Barcelona and Manchester United. Real Madrid and Liverpool are the only two clubs to have met three times.

The 1981 final in front of 48,360 in Paris was Liverpool’s third European Cup, decided by Alan Kennedy’s goal eight minutes from time. It is also one of only three finals Real Madrid have ever lost. They have played 18 and won 15, and the defeats came against Benfica in 1962, Inter in 1964 and Liverpool in 1981. Nobody has beaten Real Madrid in a European Cup final since — they have won all nine they have reached in the 45 years after Paris.

Kyiv in 2018 turned on two substitutions and a goalkeeper. Mohamed Salah went off injured in the first half after a challenge from Sergio Ramos; Gareth Bale came on and scored an overhead kick three minutes later to make it 2-1, then struck again from distance late on past Loris Karius, who had already gifted Karim Benzema the opener from a throw. Attendance was 61,561.

Saint-Denis in 2022 kicked off more than half an hour late after crowd failures outside the Stade de France, and was settled by Vinicius Junior’s finish from Federico Valverde’s low cross on 59 minutes. Thibaut Courtois turned a Sadio Mane shot onto the post and produced a better save from Salah with nine minutes left.

The biggest wins and the highest-scoring match

Liverpool 4-0 Real Madrid, Anfield, 10 March 2009 is the biggest win in the fixture — Fernando Torres on 16 minutes, Steven Gerrard with a penalty on 28 and a second two minutes after the break, Andrea Dossena on 88. With Yossi Benayoun’s late header at the Bernabeu a fortnight earlier it made the tie 5-0 on aggregate, and only Iker Casillas kept the margin down. That 4-0 was the heaviest defeat Real Madrid had suffered in the Champions League; Manchester City matched it at the Etihad in May 2023.

Real Madrid’s biggest win is the 3-0 at Anfield on 22 October 2014, Cristiano Ronaldo’s 70th Champions League goal followed by two from Benzema in front of 43,521.

The highest-scoring meeting is the 5-2 at Anfield on 21 February 2023, seven goals in one match. Liverpool led 2-0 inside 14 minutes through Darwin Nunez and Salah and lost by three: Vinicius Junior on 21 and 36, Eder Militao two minutes after half-time, Benzema on 55 and 67. Real Madrid took the tie 6-2.

Real Madrid vs Liverpool top scorers

Every goal ever scored in the fixture, by the player who scored it.

Player	Club	Goals
Karim Benzema	Real Madrid	7
Vinicius Junior	Real Madrid	5
Gareth Bale	Real Madrid	2
Steven Gerrard	Liverpool	2
Mohamed Salah	Liverpool	2
Alexis Mac Allister	Liverpool	2
Marco Asensio	Real Madrid	1
Eder Militao	Real Madrid	1
Cristiano Ronaldo	Real Madrid	1
Yossi Benayoun	Liverpool	1
Andrea Dossena	Liverpool	1
Cody Gakpo	Liverpool	1
Alan Kennedy	Liverpool	1
Sadio Mane	Liverpool	1
Darwin Nunez	Liverpool	1
Fernando Torres	Liverpool	1

The table is a complete account rather than a top ten: the Real Madrid column sums to 17 and the Liverpool column to 13, which are the goal totals for the whole rivalry.

One figure to handle carefully. Benzema is widely listed with six goals against Liverpool, and UEFA’s own archive still files them that way. Six was correct on 21 February 2023, the night of his brace at Anfield. It stopped being correct three weeks later, when he scored the only goal of the second leg at the Bernabeu. He finished with seven, and left Real Madrid that summer.

Vinicius Junior is two behind him and did something Benzema did not: he scored against Liverpool in three consecutive seasons and in three different rounds — the 2021 quarter-final, the 2022 final and the 2023 last 16.

For Liverpool, Alexis Mac Allister has scored in both of the last two meetings and is level at the top of their list with Steven Gerrard and Mohamed Salah on two.

Why this fixture suddenly happens every year

Twenty-eight years passed between the 1981 final and the next meeting. Real Madrid and Liverpool have now played in three of the last four seasons, and the reason is structural rather than coincidental.

Until 2024 the Champions League ran a 32-team group stage seeded into four pots, and two clubs from the same pot could not be drawn into the same group. Real Madrid and Liverpool were both Pot 1 clubs in 2024-25 and again in 2025-26, which under the old rules would have ruled the fixture out at the group stage completely. The one time they were drawn together in a group, in 2014-15, it was possible only because Liverpool were in Pot 3, back in the competition for the first time since 2010 with a coefficient to match.

The 36-team league phase inverted that. Each club now plays eight different opponents, two from each of the four pots — including its own. A Pot 1 club is guaranteed two Pot 1 opponents, so a tie between two of the competition’s biggest coefficients is no longer a lucky draw; it is what the format is built to generate. It has generated this one twice running, and Liverpool have won both.

Will Real Madrid and Liverpool meet again in 2026-27?

Both are in the competition. Real Madrid finished second in La Liga behind Barcelona, who took a second title in a row. Liverpool came fifth in the Premier League on 60 points, taking the last of England’s five places with a 1-1 home draw against Brentford on the final day, in a season Arsenal won.

Pots are set on the five-year UEFA club coefficient and confirmed shortly before the draw, so nothing is settled yet. If both are seeded in Pot 1 again, as they were in each of the last two seasons, the arithmetic is easy enough to check for yourself. Pot 1 holds nine clubs. Real Madrid’s two Pot 1 opponents come from the other eight, minus any Spanish club in the pot, because sides from the same association cannot be paired. Two picks from a pool of seven or eight puts Liverpool at roughly one chance in four.

The draw is on Thursday 27 August 2026. A league-phase pairing is a single match rather than a two-legged tie, so the draw would also decide whether the 14th meeting is played at Anfield or the Bernabeu. Our Manchester United vs Barcelona records page runs the same arithmetic for a fixture that has been waiting since 2023, and the El Clasico head-to-head covers Real Madrid’s other great rivalry.

Where the two clubs stand now

Both changed manager in the summer of 2026. Real Madrid appointed Jose Mourinho on 11 June, 13 years after his first spell ended, paying Benfica a reported 15 million euros to release him; he started work on 13 July. Bringing him back was one of Florentino Perez’s promises in a contested presidential election he went on to win. Liverpool replaced Arne Slot with Andoni Iraola, prised out of a Bournemouth side that had finished sixth.

The transfer traffic between the two has run one way. Trent Alexander-Arnold left Anfield for Madrid on a free in 2025 after twenty years at the club, with Liverpool taking a 10 million pound fee to release him early — and was jeered on every touch when he came on in the 82nd minute at Anfield that November. A year later Ibrahima Konate followed him, also on a free.

Neither went far in Europe last season, and both went out at the same stage. Bayern Munich knocked Real Madrid out in the quarter-finals, Michael Olise settling a seven-goal second leg in stoppage time. Liverpool lost their quarter-final to Paris Saint-Germain, who went on to retain the trophy on penalties against Arsenal in Budapest.

The trophy counts, since the fixture is usually sold as a meeting of the two biggest names in European football. Real Madrid have 15 European Cups, more than any other club, plus 36 La Liga titles and 20 Copa del Rey. Liverpool have six European Cups, more than any other English club, and 20 English league titles, eight FA Cups and a record 10 League Cups.

If you are looking at the outright and league-phase markets before the draw, our guide to the best football betting sites in India compares the operators covering the Champions League.

Frequently asked

Who has won more matches, Real Madrid or Liverpool? Real Madrid, with seven wins to Liverpool’s five from 13 meetings. One was drawn.

When did Real Madrid and Liverpool last play? 4 November 2025, at Anfield, in the Champions League league phase. Liverpool won 1-0 through an Alexis Mac Allister header from a Dominik Szoboszlai free-kick on 61 minutes, with Thibaut Courtois making eight saves.

How many times have Real Madrid and Liverpool met in a European Cup final? Three — 1981, 2018 and 2022. Liverpool won the first, Real Madrid the other two. No other pairing has met three times in the final.

What is the biggest win in the fixture? Liverpool 4-0 Real Madrid at Anfield on 10 March 2009, which made the last-16 tie 5-0 on aggregate.

Who has scored the most goals in Real Madrid vs Liverpool matches? Karim Benzema, with seven. Steven Gerrard, Mohamed Salah and Alexis Mac Allister share the Liverpool lead on two each.

Have Real Madrid and Liverpool ever played outside the Champions League? Not competitively. All 13 meetings have come in the European Cup or the Champions League.

Could Real Madrid face Liverpool in 2026-27? Yes. Both are in the competition, and the league phase pairs every club with two opponents from its own pot, so two Pot 1 sides can be drawn together. The draw is on 27 August 2026.

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