The 2018–19 UEFA Europa League knockout phase began on 12 February and ended on 29 May 2019 with the final at the Olympic Stadium in Baku, Azerbaijan, to decide the champions of the 2018–19 UEFA Europa League.
[2] For the first time, the video assistant referee (VAR) system was used in the competition, where it was implemented in the final.
The schedule was as follows (all draws were held at the UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland).
[1] Matches could also be played on Tuesdays or Wednesdays instead of the regular Thursdays due to scheduling conflicts.
The team that scored more goals on aggregate over the two legs advanced to the next round.
If no goals were scored during extra time, the tie was decided by penalty shoot-out.
In the final, which was played as a single match, if the score was level at the end of normal time, extra time would be played, followed by a penalty shoot-out if the score remained tied.
[2] The mechanism of the draws for each round was as follows: In the knockout phase, teams from the same city (Chelsea and Arsenal, Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe, and Real Betis and Sevilla) were not scheduled to play at home on the same day, due to logistics and crowd control.
To avoid such scheduling conflict, an adjustment had to be made to UEFA.
For the round of 32, since both teams were drawn to play at home in a given leg, the home match of the team which was not domestic cup champions in the qualifying season, or the team with the lower domestic ranking (if neither team were the domestic cup champions, i.e. Arsenal, Fenerbahçe, and Sevilla for this season), was moved to an earlier time on Thursday or a different day.
[4] For the round of 16, quarter-finals, and semi-finals if the two teams were drawn to play at home for the same leg, the order of legs of the tie involving the team with the lowest priority was reversed from the original draw.
[5][6] On 17 July 2014, the UEFA emergency panel ruled that Ukrainian and Russian clubs would not be drawn against each other "until further notice" due to the political unrest between the countries.