Champions League: 36 clubs discover league-phase opponents today

Champions League: 36 clubs discover league-phase opponents today

Newslife Reporter 

The 2026/27 UEFA Champions League campaign will move into a new phase on Thursday (today) as 36 of Europe’s top clubs discover their opponents in the league-phase draw.

The draw is scheduled to take place at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco from 6pm CET, which is 5pm UK time and 6pm Nigerian time. UEFA will stream the ceremony live on its digital platforms.

The highly anticipated draw will set the stage for the first phase of Europe’s premier club competition, with football giants including defending champions Paris Saint-Germain, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Liverpool, Manchester City, Arsenal, Inter Milan and Atletico Madrid among the clubs involved.

A total of 36 teams will participate in the league phase, comprising 29 clubs that qualified automatically and seven teams that secured their places through the qualifying and play-off rounds.

Unlike the traditional group-stage format, the Champions League now operates a league system in which all 36 clubs are placed in one table.

Each team will play eight matches against eight different opponents, with four fixtures at home and four away. The opponents will be drawn from the four seeding pots, with each club facing two teams from each pot.

UEFA's regulations also provide that clubs from the same national association cannot normally be drawn against one another, while a club can face a maximum of two opponents from any other association.

The 36 clubs have been divided into four pots of nine teams based on their UEFA club coefficients, with the Champions League title holders heading Pot One.

Pot One contains Paris Saint-Germain, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Liverpool, Inter Milan, Manchester City, Arsenal, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid.

Pot Two features Borussia Dortmund, Roma, Sporting CP, Aston Villa, Porto, Manchester United, Club Brugge, Real Betis and PSV Eindhoven.

Feyenoord, Lille, Bodo/Glimt, Napoli, RB Leipzig, Villarreal, Fenerbahce, Shakhtar Donetsk and Galatasaray make up Pot Three.

Pot Four consists of Slavia Prague, Slovan Bratislava, Stuttgart, AEK Athens, LASK, Como, Lens, Viking and Sabah.

The draw is expected to generate several potentially mouth-watering fixtures, with Europe's heavyweight clubs hoping to avoid difficult combinations while targeting favourable routes into the knockout stages.

The new format means there will be no traditional groups in which four teams play one another home and away. Instead, all 36 teams will compete in a single league table.

At the end of the league phase, the top eight teams will qualify directly for the Round of 16.

Teams finishing from ninth to 24th will enter the knockout phase play-offs, where they will battle for the remaining eight places in the Round of 16.

Clubs that finish between 25th and 36th will be eliminated from the Champions League.

The league phase is scheduled to begin between September 8 and 10, with subsequent matchdays taking place in October, November, December and January. The final league-phase fixtures are scheduled for January 27, 2027.

The knockout phase play-offs will be played in February, followed by the Round of 16 in March, the quarter-finals in April and the semi-finals in April and May.

The grand finale of the 2026/27 Champions League will be played on June 5, 2027, at the Estadio Metropolitano in Madrid, Spain.

For millions of football fans around the world, attention will now turn to Monaco as the draw determines the road each club must travel in pursuit of European football's most coveted club trophy.