All you need to know ahead of the UEFA Super Cup

Aston Villa lock horns with Paris Saint-Germain in Salzburg on Wednesday, for the UEFA Super Cup.

The formidable Parisians – who claimed their second Champions League crown in May – face off against Unai Emery’s Europa League winners, after their heroics against SC Freiburg in Istanbul.

It will be only the third meeting in history between the two sides, after a double-legged Champions League Quarter-Final clash in April 2025 from which PSG emerged on their way to lifting the famous trophy for the first time.

The prize this time around will be the 58cm, 12.2kg Super Cup, which the winners will lift for the second time in their respective club’s history – Villa having beaten Barcelona in 1983 and PSG defeating Tottenham Hotspur on penalties this time last year.

Victory for either side would see them join an exclusive group, becoming only the 12th team to lift the Super Cup on more than one occasion, while Luis Enrique’s men would become only the third side in history to retain the title, after AC Milan in 1990 and Real Madrid in 2017.

For the PSG boss, it’ll be a 13th managerial meeting with his Spanish counterpart Emery, Enrique having won eight of their previous 12 clashes – including in the 2015 Super Cup – with one draw and three Emery wins.

After that Super Cup win in 2015, and the one 10 years later with PSG, Enrique will be bidding to become the manager with the outright third-most wins, putting him behind only Pep Guardiola (4) and Carlo Ancelotti (5). Indeed, along with Guardiola and Ancelotti, only Zinedine Zidane, Diego Simeone and Enrique have lifted the trophy as both a player and a manger.

Emery, meanwhile, is bidding to win it for the first time, with his Villans hoping to add to the 10 Super Cups won by 6 different English teams, while PSG remain the only French team to have lifted the trophy in history.

Stadion Salzburg in Austria will be the 14th venue to host the Super Cup since the fixture switched from its long-term home of Monaco in 2013.

It becomes the first showcase UEFA club final to take place at the 30,188-seater venue, which staged three games at the 2008 European Championships. Action will get underway at 9pm local time, and an hour earlier on British soil.

The 51st edition of the Super Cup will see the Villans turn out in their all-new 2026/27 third strip, while the French outfit will don their traditional home colours of blue, red and white.

Somali official Omar Artan will be the man in the middle at Stadion Salzburg, the 34-year-old having been named CAF Men’s Referee of the Year in 2025.

He will be flanked by assistants Liban Abdoulrazack Ahmed (Djibouti) and Stephen Eleazar Onyango Yiembe (Kenya), with Slovenian Rade Obrenovič appointed fourth official. Italy’s Marco Di Bello is on VAR duty, with Guillermo Cuadra Fernandez from Spain in as assistant VAR.

History leans slightly in favour of Enrique’s men, with the Champions League winners having won 30 of the previous 50 Super Cup clashes to date.

The Villans, should they be successful, will become only the second non-Champions League-winning Super Cup champion since Zenit Saint Petersburg in 2008, joining Atlético Madrid who – as Europa League winners – lifted the Super Cup in 2010, 2012 and 2018.

Indeed, the Spanish outfit are one of only four teams to hold a 100% record in the fixture, having competed in more than one, an exclusive list of sides Villa will join with victory. Anderlecht (winners in 1976 and 1976), Valencia (1980 and 2004) and Juventus (1994 and 1996) are the others.

If the match is level after 90 minutes, a penalty shoot-out will be required to determine the winner, as it was last year, when PSG defeated Spurs 4-3 on spot-kicks after a 2-2 draw in regulation time.