The Champions League league phase draw takes place at 5pm on Thursday, with Arsenal, Aston Villa, Liverpool, Manchester City and Manchester United all waiting to discover their opponents.
Held in Monaco, the draw features the 29 teams that secured automatic qualification for the league phase, along with seven sides that won their play-offs on Tuesday and Wednesday: AEK Athens, LASK, Viking, Slovan Bratislava, Sabah, Fenerbahce and Bodo/Glimt.
How the draw works
Each of the 36 competitors will be paired against eight different teams during this stage, with the four pots decided using the five-year UEFA club coefficient ranking.
Every team is assigned a physical ball, but when a club is drawn, a computer assigns their opponents for the eight matches. The outcome is displayed on screen for those in Monaco and watching at home. The software also determines which team hosts each fixture.
Banned fixtures and restrictions
A UEFA rule introduced after the switch from the group stage to the league phase states the exact same fixture cannot be played three years in a row with the same team hosting. This affects two Premier League clubs: Inter Milan vs Arsenal and Liverpool vs Real Madrid are both prohibited for a third consecutive year. Arsenal may still host Inter, and Liverpool can travel to the Bernabeu.
National regulations also prevent teams from facing another side from the same country during the league phase, and they can face a maximum of two teams from one country. The draw software automatically enforces these rules to avoid deadlock.
What happens next
The five Premier League teams involved cannot play each other until later stages. There has been no all-English Champions League match-up since the 2021 final, when Chelsea beat Manchester City.
League phase matches begin on September 8, with the first round spread across Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of that week. Six rounds of fixtures take place before the end of the year, with the final two gameweeks in January. The last round, on January 27, sees 18 matches played simultaneously as the knockout qualifiers are decided.
