On Friday August 29, UEFA will make their first Champions League draw under the new 'Swiss model' system that comes into effect for the new campaign.
The Champions League group stage has been done away with as we know it, but there is still a draw to be made to determine which sides will play one another.
Each competing side will play eight games in what is now known as the league phase (showing UEFA's trademark knack for linguistic clumsiness: we're all going to have to say 'Champions League league phase' now, are we, repeating the words 'league' like idiots?). The results all count towards a single league table that will determine which sides will go through to the next round of the competition.
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Champions League pots 2024/25: Who's qualified and which pot are they in?
The pots for the 2024/25 Champions League league phase draw are as follows:
Pot 1
- Real Madrid
- Manchester City
- Bayern Munich
- Paris Saint-Germain
- Liverpool
- Inter Milan
- Borussia Dortmund
- RB Leipzig
- Barcelona
Pot 2
- Bayer Leverkusen
- Atletico Madrid
- Atalanta
- Juventus
- Benfica
- Arsenal
- Club Brugge
- Shakhtar Donetsk
- Milan
Pot 3
- Feyenoord
- Sporting CP
- PSV Eindhoven
- Celtic
- Winner of Young Boys v Galatasaray play-off
- Winner of Dinamo Zagreb v Qarabag play-off
- Winner of Lille v Slavia Prague play-off
- TBD (see below)
- TBD (see below)
Pot 4
- Monaco
- Aston Villa
- Bologna
- Girona
- VfB Stuttgart
- Sturm Graz
- Brest
- Winner of Malma v Sparta Prague play-off
- TBD (see below)
Who will fill those TBD slots?
Those belong to the winners of the three other play-off games - we've not been able to include them more precisely, because which pot they go into depends on who goes through.
The games in question are:
- Midtjylland v Slovan Bratislava
- Bodo/Glimt v Red Star Belgrade
- Dynamo Kyiv v Red Bull Salzburg
The qualifying side with the lowest coefficient will go into pot 4, with the others going into pot 3.
How does the Champions League draw work?
There is still a draw to be made despite the abolition of the traditional group stage. We're essentially going to have four groups of nine, but with all the results going into one far league table.
The draw this season is fully computerised, as doing it otherwise would have taken a monstrously long time even by UEFA's usual drawn-out standards.
They will however make a great show of wasting everybody's time in the name of creating a sense of occasion, manually drawing each team from Pot 1 before then getting the computer to decide the rest of that 'group'. Find out more about how the Champions League draw works.
When will the games be played?
League stage games will be held as follows, with all 18 games on the final matchday kicking off simultaneously.
The knockout stages will then begin in February with a knockout round played between the 16 sides who finish from 9th to 24th in the league phase.
The winners of those ties will then go on to join the teams ranked 1st-8th in the round of 16.
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