Newcastle are set to play a Champions League play-off in Baku, more than 2,500 miles from home. It is the longest trip any English side have ever made in the competition.
Ahead of their Champions League play-off on Wednesday night, Newcastle United will make a record-breaking journey.
Their 2,529-mile trip to face Qarabag will be the longest any English team have ever made in the history of the competition.
2529 – Newcastle United’s UEFA Champions League Play-Off journey of 2529 miles to Qarabag will be the longest-ever distance travelled by an English team in the history of the competition. Expedition. pic.twitter.com/MNRKHNA6Pj
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) January 30, 2026
A flight from Newcastle to Baku would take the squad approximately five and a half hours, but it is even more of a slog for fans. With no direct flights between the cities for supporters without access to a private jet or a charter flight, the journey will take significantly longer. Anyone hoping to travel to the capital of Azerbaijan by car would be looking at around 60 hours of solid driving. This is as extreme as it has ever got for an English team in Europe’s biggest competition, breaking a record previously held by Chelsea, who have twice made the 2,471-mile trip to Qarabag, including in the league phase of this season’s Champions League.
We’re aware Newcastle aren’t going to be travelling precisely from St. James’ Park to Qarabag’s ground, but we need to have some fixed points to measure from, so we’re going with home stadiums. And when calculating the distances between opposition grounds for every Champions League game, this is the furthest a Premier League team will have travelled.
Qarabag went to Liverpool for a league-phase meeting only a few weeks ago, and Anfield is slightly further from the Tofik Bakhramov Stadium (2,583 miles), but there was no return game for Liverpool to make the journey to Baku. Similarly, Arsenal hosted Kazakh side Kairat in the final round of fixtures in the league phase, after they had made a 3,479-mile journey to the Emirates, but Arsenal didn’t have to make the return trip.
Newcastle have to go to Azerbaijan, though, and will play a game four time zones away from England, with a place in the last 16 of the Champions League on the line.
It will be the 17th-longest journey made by any team for a Champions League game (based on distance between the home stadiums), with all of the top 18 (including Newcastle’s two-legged upcoming tie with Qarabag) involving one of Qarabag (Azerbaijan), Astana or Kairat (both Kazakhstan). Every one of those games has come since 2015.
Kairat are based in the city of Almaty, not far from the border with China, so it will come as no surprise that they are the team furthest from mainland Europe who have ever competed in the Champions League. This season was their first involvement in the competition, so many of the top entries for the longest distance travelled for games are from the current campaign.
For example, their away game against Sporting CP in Lisbon in September brought the longest journey any team have ever made for a Champions League game. Kairat’s players clocked up a whopping 4,291 miles travelling from the deepest depths of eastern Europe – so far in fact that the country they are from is only partly in Europe – to one of the western-most points in the continent.
It is a record that may not be broken for a long time, with few points in Europe further from Almaty than the Portuguese capital, and few European teams based further east than eastern Kazakhstan.
Seven of Kairat’s eight league-phase fixtures from 2025-26 appear in the top 12 longest distances travelled for a game in Champions League history. The only one that doesn’t was their home game against Pafos, from Cyprus, who still had to travel 2,406 miles to play that match. That will be the 36th-furthest any team have gone for a game in the competition once Newcastle’s two-legged tie has been played, and both they and Qarabag have made the 2,529-mile trip.
Before Kairat played in the Champions League, the record for the longest distance travelled was set when Astana faced Benfica in the 2015-16 group stage (3,831 miles). That record stood for 10 years and two days, until Kairat played Sporting on their debut in the competition on 17 September 2025. Real Madrid’s trip to Almaty a fortnight later was also a longer distance than the previous record.
Newcastle fans might be wondering what impact such a lengthy trip will have on their players.
Long journeys are usually viewed as a major negative whenever a draw is made. Teams tend to want to avoid monster away days almost as much as particularly tough opposition. Playing after such a long journey, with a significant time difference, is usually viewed as a considerable extra challenge to overcome.
But the quality of the opposition is a much bigger consideration. While Qarabag cannot be underestimated given they had enough quality to finish 22nd in the league phase this season, they also lost 6-0 at Liverpool on Matchday 8 and 4-2 at home to Ajax on MD6. Ajax had lost their previous five games in the competition.
Similarly, Kairat might not have been helped by having to travel such long distances, but a bigger reason they lost seven of their eight league-phase games is that they just weren’t good enough. They scored only one goal in their four home games.
And history tells us that teams from bigger European leagues don’t tend to struggle even after the longest journeys, presumably due to the (low) quality of the opposition. Six away trips to Kazakhstan or Azerbaijan in Champions League history have been longer than Newcastle’s upcoming journey, and in those six games, the away side have never lost, winning three and drawing three.
It’s the same for Premier League teams. Of the nine journeys other than Newcastle’s that make up the top 10 longest made by English sides for a Champions League game, they have won six, drawn two and lost only one. The sole defeat was a 3-0 loss for a weakened Manchester United against Maccabi Haifa in October 2002, though that game was played in Nicosia, Cyprus, due to security concerns in the Middle East at the time. Qualification for the next round was also already assured for United, who fielded the likes of Ricardo, Diego Forlán, Daniel Nardiello and Mads Timm that night.
However, the impact of a taxing journey, of course, extends beyond a single game. Even if Newcastle’s players set off as close to full-time – which will be around midnight local time – as possible, they won’t return home until well into Thursday, leaving them only Friday to get back on English time and prepare for Saturday’s (not-very-)inviting-looking trip to Manchester City. They have been helped at least by kick-off being moved to 8pm, but it still looks like a major challenge.
They may take heart, however, from the fortunes of other Premier League teams to make long journeys. Of the nine previous longest away trips for English sides, seven have followed up with a Premier League win on the weekend a few days later, with two other games drawn. And the two sides who drew their next game were the teams who faced the toughest opposition on the list (Chelsea drew 1-1 with Liverpool in November 2017 and 0-0 with Spurs in November 2015).
That said, three of the nine positive weekend results were scraped with very late winners or equalisers, so some of the teams involved may have been affected by their midweek travels.
Newcastle will hope to be able to shake off the effects of their long journey, but facing a resurgent City away from home might prove too big an ask.
And before they even get to that, the priority will be to fly back from Baku with a positive result to take into the second leg. Qarabag are no pushovers on home soil, and Chelsea’s 2-2 draw there in November this season should provide a cautionary tale for Eddie Howe and his men.
The challenge that faces them is more than just a very, very, very long journey.
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