The draw for the league phase of the 2026-2027 UEFA Champions League takes place tomorrow, Thursday, with a twist. A computer programme built for the purpose now handles the fixtures.
Monaco hosts the ceremony, where the 36 participating clubs will discover their league-phase opponents.
Paris Saint-Germain, champions in each of the last two editions, head the list of favourites once again. Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Liverpool, Manchester City, Barcelona and Arsenal all fancy their chances too.
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36 clubs across four pots
The play-offs have all but finalised the field. The 36 clubs will be spread across four pots according to each club's coefficient.
Paris Saint-Germain sit in the first pot, alongside Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Liverpool, Inter Milan, Manchester City, Arsenal, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid. The second pot features Borussia Dortmund, Roma, Sporting Lisbon, Aston Villa, Porto, Manchester United, Club Brugge, Real Betis and PSV Eindhoven.
Making up the third pot are Feyenoord, Lille, Bodo/Glimt, Napoli, Leipzig, Villarreal, Shakhtar Donetsk and Galatasaray, plus the winner of the Lyon and Fenerbahce fixture.
Down in the fourth pot sit Slavia Prague, Stuttgart, LASK, Como, Lens and Qarabag, alongside the winners of the fixtures between AEK and Levski, Celje and Slovan Bratislava, and Viking and Dinamo Zagreb.
The draw with computer assistance
Football officials and stars will pack out the ceremony, but the fixtures themselves won't be decided the old-fashioned way. Once a first-pot club is drawn, a computer programme works out its eight opponents while sticking to the rules, chief among them that a team cannot face a side from the same country.
That same programme also sets the venues, so each team plays four matches at home and four away. After the first pot comes the second, then the third, then the fourth, with every team's fixtures and running order settled during the draw itself.
UEFA had already run this computer-assisted system across the 2024-2025 and 2025-2026 seasons.
Two opponents from each pot
No team will meet a side from its own country in the league phase. Each club faces two opponents from each of the four pots, one at home and one away per pot.
Accordingly, the distribution for each team is as follows:
- A home match against a team from the first pot.
- An away match against a team from the first pot.
- A home match against a team from the second pot.
- An away match against a team from the second pot.
- A home match against a team from the third pot.
- An away match against a team from the third pot.
- A home match against a team from the fourth pot.
- An away match against a team from the fourth pot.
UEFA brought in another rule from last season to stop two teams playing at the same stadium across three straight editions, all in the name of fresher fixtures.
Because of it, Liverpool and Real Madrid won't meet at Anfield this season, though the draw could still throw them together at the Santiago Bernabeu. Inter Milan and Arsenal, likewise, cannot clash at the Giuseppe Meazza.
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