Champions League Draw: Five English Clubs Target PSG's Downfall
The Champions League is back in Monaco today, and this time England arrive mob‑handed.
Five Premier League sides step into the spotlight at the Grimaldi Forum as the revamped League Phase draw is made, all of them staring up at the same target: Paris Saint‑Germain, the team that has turned Europe’s biggest prize into its own private property.
England’s pack hunts in numbers
Arsenal come in as English champions and last season’s nearly men, beaten by PSG on penalties in the final. Manchester City, runners-up in the Premier League, are alongside them. Manchester United return to the top table. Liverpool are back as fifth-placed finishers. Aston Villa arrive not just as league climbers, but as Europa League holders and fourth-place finishers.
Five English crests in the drum. One French superpower to chase down.
PSG, who edged Arsenal in that agonising shootout last season, have reloaded again over the summer and go into the new campaign as favourites to lift the Champions League for a third straight year. They are the standard. The rest, once more, are the storyline.
Arsenal are widely seen as the most serious threat to the Parisian grip on the trophy, the team closest to cracking the code. Behind them lurk the old Spanish heavyweights: Barcelona, and Real Madrid under Jose Mourinho for a second spell, a reunion that gives this season an extra edge.
The scene is set. Now the draw has to deal the cards.
When and where the draw takes place
The league phase draw for the 2026/27 Champions League is staged today, Thursday, August 27, 2026, from 5pm BST.
The Grimaldi Forum in Monaco, long the backdrop for European football’s most glamorous admin day, hosts the ceremony.
How to watch it unfold
In the UK, TNT Sports 1 will show the draw live, with coverage beginning at 5pm BST and the balls coming out shortly after.
TNT Sports subscribers can stream the event via the HBO Max app and website, while UEFA.com and the TNT Sports YouTube channel will carry free live coverage.
For those who prefer words to studio gloss, Standard Sport will run a live blog tracking every twist of the draw.
The pots: who can face whom?
All 36 qualified clubs are split into four seeding pots of nine, based on UEFA club coefficients at the start of the season. The play-off ties wrapped up on Wednesday night, locking the pots in place.
- Pot 1 Paris Saint‑Germain, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Liverpool, Inter Milan, Manchester City, Arsenal, Barcelona, Atletico Madrid
- Pot 2 Borussia Dortmund, Roma, Sporting CP, Aston Villa, Porto, Manchester United, Club Brugge, Real Betis, PSV Eindhoven
- Pot 3 Feyenoord, Lille, Bodo/Glimt, Napoli, RB Leipzig, Villarreal, Fenerbahce, Shakhtar Donetsk, Galatasaray
- Pot 4 Slavia Prague, Slovan Bratislava, Stuttgart, AEK Athens, LASK, Como, Lens, Viking, Sabah
Liverpool and Arsenal sit among the elite in Pot 1, protected from each other but exposed to dangerous floaters from the other three groups. Manchester United and Aston Villa lurk in Pot 2, the kind of opponents nobody in Pot 1 wants to see appear on the big screen.
How the new League Phase works
This is not the old group stage. That era has gone.
Under the new format, each team plays eight league-phase matches. There are no more four-team groups, no more home-and-away double-headers against the same three opponents.
Instead, every club faces eight different sides: four at home, four away.
The process is simple enough. The 36 teams are seeded into four pots. Each club is then drawn to face two opponents from each pot. One of those ties is at home, the other away, across Pots 1, 2, 3 and 4.
The result is a single, sprawling league table. Every fixture matters, every slip is magnified, and the variety of opponents should test depth and adaptability as much as star quality.
Key dates for the calendar
The League Phase will be stretched across the season, with eight matchdays locked in:
- Matchday 1: September 8–10, 2026
- Matchday 2: October 13/14, 2026
- Matchday 3: October 20/21, 2026
- Matchday 4: November 3/4, 2026
- Matchday 5: November 24/25, 2026
- Matchday 6: December 8/9, 2026
- Matchday 7: January 19/20, 2026
- Matchday 8: January 27, 2026
By the time that final matchday closes in late January, the picture will be clear: who has navigated the chaos, who has fallen away, and which of England’s five challengers is truly equipped to rip the crown from PSG’s grasp.
