Last Updated on July 19, 2026 by Maurya
Few sights in football history have been as inevitable — and as thrilling — as Lionel Messi in full flow on a Champions League night at Camp Nou. Over 17 seasons in Europe’s premier club competition, the Argentine maestro scored 129 goals, lifted the trophy four times, and produced eight hat-tricks that range from the merely brilliant to the genuinely historic.
How Many Champions League Hat-Tricks Does Messi Have?
Lionel Messi scored eight hat-tricks in the UEFA Champions League, all of them for FC Barcelona between April 2010 and September 2018. That tally places him joint-first in the all-time list alongside his great rival Cristiano Ronaldo. One of those eight performances — the five-goal demolition of Bayer Leverkusen in 2012 — remains one of the most extraordinary individual displays the competition has ever seen.
Messi’s Champions League Hat-Tricks Info
| # | Date | Opponent | Score | Goals | Stage |
| 1 | 6 April 2010 | Arsenal | 4–1 | 4 | Quarter-final, 2nd leg |
| 2 | 1 November 2011 | Viktoria Plzeň | 4–0 (away) | 3 | Group stage |
| 3 | 7 March 2012 | Bayer Leverkusen | 7–1 | 5 | Round of 16, 2nd leg |
| 4 | 18 September 2013 | Ajax | 4–0 | 3 | Group stage |
| 5 | 25 November 2014 | APOEL Nicosia | 4–0 (away) | 3 | Group stage |
| 6 | 13 September 2016 | Celtic | 7–0 | 3 | Group stage |
| 7 | 19 October 2016 | Manchester City | 4–0 | 3 | Group stage |
| 8 | 18 September 2018 | PSV Eindhoven | 4–0 | 3 | Group stage |
Now let’s break down each of these performances, because the numbers alone don’t do them justice.
Four Goals vs Arsenal — 6 April 2010
Barcelona 4–1 Arsenal | Quarter-final, second leg | Camp Nou
Messi’s first Champions League hat-trick didn’t stop at three. After Nicklas Bendtner had given Arsenal a shock early lead at Camp Nou, the 22-year-old responded with one of the great individual performances in knockout football. Four goals in just over an hour — including a delicious chip over Manuel Almunia — turned a nervy tie into a procession and sent Barcelona through 6–3 on aggregate.
What made the night special was the variety on display: a thunderous strike from distance, composed one-on-one finishes, and that impudent lob. Arsène Wenger, rarely one for hyperbole, described Messi afterward as being like a PlayStation player. The performance announced that Messi had moved beyond being merely the world’s best player — he was becoming a player capable of deciding the biggest matches single-handedly.
Hat-Trick vs Viktoria Plzeň — 1 November 2011
Viktoria Plzeň 0–4 Barcelona | Group stage | Doosan Arena
Eighteen months passed before treble number two, and it arrived on a cold night in the Czech Republic. Facing Viktoria Plzeň in the group stage, Messi struck three times in a comfortable 4–0 away victory during what would become his most prolific season ever — the astonishing 2011–12 campaign in which he scored 73 goals in all competitions.
This hat-trick is often the forgotten entry on the list, sandwiched between the Arsenal masterclass and the Leverkusen record-breaker. But it carried real significance: the goals took Messi past the 200-goal mark for Barcelona at just 24 years old, underlining the relentless consistency that separated him from every other forward of his generation.
FIVE Goals vs Bayer Leverkusen — 7 March 2012
Barcelona 7–1 Bayer Leverkusen | Round of 16, second leg | Camp Nou
The crown jewel. On this night, Messi became the first player in history to score five goals in a single Champions League match — a feat achieved in the competition’s modern era by only a handful of players since, and never with such elegance.
Leverkusen arrived at Camp Nou trailing 3–1 from the first leg and hoping to keep the score respectable. Instead, they were dismantled. Messi chipped goalkeeper Bernd Leno twice, slotted home twice more with trademark precision, and completed the quintet with a low drive. Barcelona won 7–1, and the football world simply ran out of superlatives.
Pep Guardiola, his manager at the time, summed up the general mood by admitting that words to describe Messi had essentially been exhausted. For historians of the competition, this match remains the reference point for individual dominance in a Champions League knockout tie.
Hat-Trick vs Ajax — 18 September 2013
Barcelona 4–0 Ajax | Group stage | Camp Nou
Messi opened Barcelona’s 2013–14 European campaign in emphatic style, tearing apart a young Ajax side on matchday one. A trademark free-kick whipped over the wall got him started, and two second-half finishes completed the treble in a 4–0 win.
The performance was notable for its timing. Messi had faced questions that autumn about fitness niggles and whether Neymar’s arrival would disrupt his rhythm. The answer was delivered inside 90 minutes. The hat-trick also moved him level with Raúl in career Champions League hat-tricks at the time and kept him on course for the all-time scoring record he would claim a year later.
Hat-Trick vs APOEL Nicosia — 25 November 2014
APOEL 0–4 Barcelona | Group stage | GSP Stadium, Nicosia
If the Leverkusen game was the most spectacular, the APOEL hat-trick was the most historic. With his second goal of the night in Cyprus, Messi scored his 72nd Champions League goal, overtaking Raúl’s long-standing record of 71 to become the competition’s all-time top scorer. He then added a third for good measure, finishing the night on 74.
The record lasted only until Cristiano Ronaldo reclaimed it, beginning a back-and-forth that defined a decade, but the moment itself was landmark stuff: at 27, Messi had outscored every player in the 59-year history of the European Cup and Champions League. Remarkably, he broke the record just three days after equalling Telmo Zarra’s all-time La Liga scoring record — arguably the most prolific single week of his career.
Hat-Trick vs Celtic — 13 September 2016
Barcelona 7–0 Celtic | Group stage | Camp Nou
Brendan Rodgers’ Celtic came to Camp Nou for the opening group game of 2016–17 and ran into the MSN front line at its terrifying peak. Messi scored inside three minutes, added a second before half-time, and completed his treble on the hour as Barcelona romped to a 7–0 victory — one of the heaviest defeats in Celtic’s storied European history.
This was Messi’s first Champions League hat-trick in nearly two years, and it kicked off a group-stage campaign in which he was practically unplayable. As it turned out, he wasn’t finished with that group stage yet.
Hat-Trick vs Manchester City — 19 October 2016
Barcelona 4–0 Manchester City | Group stage | Camp Nou
Five weeks after destroying Celtic, Messi produced a second hat-trick in the same group — this time against Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City, in the Catalan coach’s first return to Camp Nou since leaving the club.
The reunion narrative dominated the build-up, but Messi wrote the story. He pounced on defensive errors, finished with ruthless economy, and had his treble wrapped up by the 69th minute of a 4–0 win. It remains one of the rare hat-tricks scored against a genuinely elite opponent in the group stage, and it made 2016–17 the only season in which Messi recorded two Champions League hat-tricks in a single group phase.
For City, the night was a painful lesson. For neutrals, it was confirmation that even the best-coached, most expensively assembled defences had no reliable answer to Messi in that mood.
Hat-Trick vs PSV Eindhoven — 18 September 2018
Barcelona 4–0 PSV | Group stage | Camp Nou
The final entry on the list arrived on the opening night of the 2018–19 campaign — Messi’s first match as Barcelona’s official club captain in the Champions League. He curled home an exquisite free-kick into the top corner, added a second from close range, and sealed the treble late on in a 4–0 win over PSV Eindhoven.
The hat-trick carried a statistical milestone of its own: it was Messi’s eighth in the competition, drawing him level with Cristiano Ronaldo at the top of the all-time Champions League hat-trick chart. Neither player would add another, leaving the two greatest goalscorers of the modern era locked together on this record just as they are intertwined in so many others.
Messi vs Ronaldo: The Hat-Trick Head-to-Head
No discussion of Champions League hat-tricks is complete without the comparison that defined an era.
- Total UCL hat-tricks: Messi 8, Ronaldo 8 (joint record)
- Most goals in a single UCL match: Messi 5 (vs Leverkusen, 2012) vs Ronaldo 4 (vs Malmö, 2015)
- Knockout-stage hat-tricks: Ronaldo famously scored knockout trebles against Bayern Munich (2017) and Atlético Madrid (2019), while Messi’s knockout multi-goal masterpieces came against Arsenal (2010) and Leverkusen (2012)
- Overall UCL goals: Ronaldo finished his European career as the competition’s all-time top scorer, with Messi second on 129
The contrast in profile is interesting: six of Messi’s eight hat-tricks came in the group stage, but his two knockout performances — four goals against Arsenal and five against Leverkusen — are arguably the two most dominant individual knockout displays in the competition’s history.
Records and Notable Facts From Messi’s UCL Hat-Tricks
- First player to score five goals in a single Champions League match (vs Bayer Leverkusen, 2012)
- Joint-most hat-tricks in Champions League history (8, level with Cristiano Ronaldo)
- Two hat-tricks in a single group stage (Celtic and Manchester City, 2016–17)
- Became the competition’s all-time top scorer during a hat-trick (vs APOEL, 2014)
- All eight hat-tricks came in Barcelona victories, with a combined scoreline of 38–2 across the eight matches
- Seven of the eight were scored at Camp Nou or in dominant away wins where Barcelona kept a clean sheet — only Arsenal managed to score against Barça on a Messi hat-trick night
- Messi scored hat-tricks against opponents from seven different countries: England, Czech Republic, Germany, Netherlands, Cyprus, and Scotland (plus England twice)
Why Messi Never Scored a UCL Hat-Trick After 2018
It’s a fair question given he played five more Champions League seasons — three with Barcelona and two with Paris Saint-Germain. Several factors explain it. Barcelona’s decline as a European force after 2018 meant fewer one-sided nights; the team’s tactical structure leaned increasingly on Messi as a creator dropping deep rather than a pure finisher; and at PSG he shared scoring duties with Kylian Mbappé and Neymar while adapting to a new league and a deeper playmaking role. He continued scoring in the competition — including memorable strikes against Manchester City in 2021 — but the days of three-goal demolitions had passed.
His European chapter closed in 2023 when he moved to Inter Miami in Major League Soccer, leaving his Champions League hat-trick count frozen at eight — a mark that, alongside Ronaldo’s, may stand for a very long time.
FAQs
How many hat-tricks did Messi score in the Champions League? Eight — all for Barcelona, between 2010 and 2018. This is the joint record, shared with Cristiano Ronaldo.
What was Messi’s best Champions League hat-trick? Most fans and pundits point to the five-goal performance against Bayer Leverkusen in March 2012, when he became the first player ever to score five in a single Champions League match. Purists often argue for the four-goal display against Arsenal in 2010 because it came in a quarter-final against elite opposition.
Did Messi ever score a hat-trick in a Champions League final? No. Messi scored in two finals — the winners against Manchester United in 2009 (a header) and 2011 (a brilliant strike from distance) — but never more than once in a final.
Who has more Champions League hat-tricks, Messi or Ronaldo? They are level on eight apiece, the joint record in the competition’s history.
How many Champions League titles did Messi win? Four, all with Barcelona: 2005–06, 2008–09, 2010–11, and 2014–15.
How many total Champions League goals did Messi score? 129 goals, the second-highest tally in the competition’s history behind Cristiano Ronaldo.
Final Thoughts
Eight hat-tricks across eight seasons, against opponents ranging from Cypriot champions to Premier League giants, including the single greatest goalscoring performance the Champions League has ever witnessed — Messi’s treble record is a story of sustained, almost casual brilliance. The Arsenal game announced him as a match-winner on the grandest stage; the Leverkusen night made history; the APOEL treble crowned him the competition’s top scorer; and the PSV hat-trick tied the all-time record with a free-kick worthy of the moment.
For a generation of football fans, those Camp Nou European nights — the low centre of gravity, the sudden acceleration, the third goal that always seemed to arrive with an air of inevitability — remain the defining images of the Champions League itself.
