This season, the knock-out stage of the tournament only started with the 1/8-final matchup. Next year, the knock-out stage will begin sooner, meaning there will be a playoff round of 32 (1/16-final).
Furthermore, the Group Stage of the tournament will only consist out of two home and two away games for each team. The two best teams of each group will advance to the playoff rounds.
As for the 48 teams, they will read as follows:
26 founding A-License clubs (Finland, Sweden 6 clubs each, Czech Republic, Germany and Switzerland 4 clubs each and Austria 2 clubs)
12 B-license clubs (in principle champions and regular season winners) from the six founding leagues (AUT, CZE, FIN, GER, SWE, SUI)
10 C-license (“Wild Card”) teams from other European leagues to be determined later (of which one license may be assigned to the 2015 IIHF Continental Cup winner)
This format change was also done in order to give the KHL a chance to participate in the future. For now, invitations for the C-license will mainly be extended to teams from Slovakia, France, Norway, Denmark and Great Britain.
