The 2025\/26 edition was the second use of the league phase format, which replaced the previous group stage, and comprised of 36 teams instead of 32. <\/p>\n
This system will continue into the 2026\/27 campaign, with each team playing eight matches against eight different teams, four at home and four away. <\/p>\n
The top eight sides in the league qualify automatically for the knockout stage, while the teams finishing in ninth to 24th place will compete in a two-legged play-off to secure their path into the last 16.<\/p>\n
Two of the additional league phase places go to the associations with the best collective performance by their clubs in the previous season. England and Spain performed the best in 2024\/25, meaning an extra place was allocated to the Premier League and La Liga.<\/p>\n
In 2025\/26, we finished in top spot, winning all eight matches for the first time in the format’s history.<\/p>\n
WHO HAS QUALIFIED FOR THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE?<\/h2>\n\n\n<\/article>\n<\/article>\nThere will be five Premier League clubs in the UCL next season with Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Aston Villa doing so by finishing in the top five of the division.<\/p>\n
Spanish teams also saw five teams advance via their La Liga finishes, with Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atletico Madrid, Villarreal and Real Betis making up their representatives.<\/p>\n
Italy and Germany will have four teams apiece, with Napoli, Inter Milan, AS Roma and Como qualifying from Serie A. Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, RB Leipzig and Stuttgart qualified from the Bundesliga.<\/p>\n
There are three sides coming from France, with defending European champions Paris Saint-Germain joined by Lens and Lille. There are two sides from the Netherlands as Eredivisie winners PSV and runners-up Feyenoord both reached the league phase.<\/p>\n
Porto and Sporting Lisbon are the Portuguese representation, with Galatasaray from Turkiye, Slavia Prague from Czechia, and Shakhtar from Ukraine, all of whom won their domestic leagues and thus punched their tickets months ago, as did Belgium’s Club Brugge.<\/p>\n
Seven other teams won their spots by advancing through the pre-season qualifiers, with the draw for the first and second qualifying rounds taking place on June 16 and June 17, respectively. <\/p>\n
Five of the seven qualifiers will be from the ‘champions path’ which is made up of domestic winners from 42 nations.<\/p>\n
The remaining two will come from sides who finished second, third or fourth in their respective leagues.<\/p>\n
The qualifiers will conclude on August 26, with the draw for the League Phase taking place on August 27.<\/p>\n
WHO COULD WE FACE IN THE LEAGUE PHASE?<\/h2>\n\n\n<\/article>\n<\/article>\nThere are a number of rules surrounding the Champions League draw. One is that we cannot face fellow Premier League teams. This means we will not play Liverpool, Manchester City, Chelsea, Newcastle United or Tottenham at this stage of the competition.<\/p>\n
The four pots are determined by UEFA club coefficient. While all pots are yet to be filled, it has been confirmed that we will be in pot 1 for this draw, alongside Paris Saint-Germain, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Liverpool, Inter Milan, Manchester City, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid.<\/p>\n
Pot 2 consists of Borussia Dortmund, AS Roma, Sporting CP, Porto, Club Brugge, Real Betis, PSV Eindhoven and Premier League sides, Aston Villa and Manchester United.<\/p>\n
Feyenoord, Lille, Napoli, RB Leipzig, Villarreal, Shakhtar Donetsk and Galatasaray will all be in pot 3.<\/p>\n
While Como and Lens will be in pot 4, Slavia Prague, Stuttgart and the remaining seven qualifiers are yet to be assigned to either pot 3 or pot 4.<\/p>\n
We will play two teams from each pot, one at home and one away, and we also cannot be drawn against more than two teams from the same country.<\/p>\n
The play-off round of the Champions League qualifying stages is currently being held. Here are the current scores of the two-legged affairs, with the return fixtures being played today.<\/p>\n
All pots will be confirmed on August 26, once the final qualifiers have taken place.<\/p>\n
WHEN IS THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE DRAW?<\/h2>\n\n\n<\/article>\n<\/article>\nThe draw will take place on Thursday, August 27, 2026, where we will find out the eight teams we will face in the opening stage.<\/p>\n
The league phase matches will take place on September 8-10, October 13-14, October 20-21, November 3-4, November 24-25, December 8-9, January 19-20 and January 27.<\/p>\n
The draw for the knockout play-offs rounds will be carried out on January 29, 2027, with the two legs taking place on February 16-17 and February 23-24.<\/p>\n
Following that, the draw for the round of 16, quarter-finals, semi-finals and final will all be held on February 26, 2026. <\/p>\n
The round of 16 matches will occur on March 9-10 and March 16-17. Quarter-final matches will be held on April 6-7 and April 13-14, before the semi-finals on April 27-28 and May 4-5. The final will take place on Saturday, June 5, 2027, at the Wanda Metropolitano in Madrid, Spain.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Copyright 2026 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Having reached our second Champions League final last season, we can start looking ahead to the 2026\/27 campaign. We lost out to Paris Saint-Germain on penalties in Budapest but after … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3810,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
There will be five Premier League clubs in the UCL next season with Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Aston Villa doing so by finishing in the top five of the division.<\/p>\n
Spanish teams also saw five teams advance via their La Liga finishes, with Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atletico Madrid, Villarreal and Real Betis making up their representatives.<\/p>\n
Italy and Germany will have four teams apiece, with Napoli, Inter Milan, AS Roma and Como qualifying from Serie A. Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, RB Leipzig and Stuttgart qualified from the Bundesliga.<\/p>\n
There are three sides coming from France, with defending European champions Paris Saint-Germain joined by Lens and Lille. There are two sides from the Netherlands as Eredivisie winners PSV and runners-up Feyenoord both reached the league phase.<\/p>\n
Porto and Sporting Lisbon are the Portuguese representation, with Galatasaray from Turkiye, Slavia Prague from Czechia, and Shakhtar from Ukraine, all of whom won their domestic leagues and thus punched their tickets months ago, as did Belgium’s Club Brugge.<\/p>\n
Seven other teams won their spots by advancing through the pre-season qualifiers, with the draw for the first and second qualifying rounds taking place on June 16 and June 17, respectively. <\/p>\n
Five of the seven qualifiers will be from the ‘champions path’ which is made up of domestic winners from 42 nations.<\/p>\n
The remaining two will come from sides who finished second, third or fourth in their respective leagues.<\/p>\n
The qualifiers will conclude on August 26, with the draw for the League Phase taking place on August 27.<\/p>\n
WHO COULD WE FACE IN THE LEAGUE PHASE?<\/h2>\n\n\n<\/article>\n<\/article>\nThere are a number of rules surrounding the Champions League draw. One is that we cannot face fellow Premier League teams. This means we will not play Liverpool, Manchester City, Chelsea, Newcastle United or Tottenham at this stage of the competition.<\/p>\n
The four pots are determined by UEFA club coefficient. While all pots are yet to be filled, it has been confirmed that we will be in pot 1 for this draw, alongside Paris Saint-Germain, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Liverpool, Inter Milan, Manchester City, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid.<\/p>\n
Pot 2 consists of Borussia Dortmund, AS Roma, Sporting CP, Porto, Club Brugge, Real Betis, PSV Eindhoven and Premier League sides, Aston Villa and Manchester United.<\/p>\n
Feyenoord, Lille, Napoli, RB Leipzig, Villarreal, Shakhtar Donetsk and Galatasaray will all be in pot 3.<\/p>\n
While Como and Lens will be in pot 4, Slavia Prague, Stuttgart and the remaining seven qualifiers are yet to be assigned to either pot 3 or pot 4.<\/p>\n
We will play two teams from each pot, one at home and one away, and we also cannot be drawn against more than two teams from the same country.<\/p>\n
The play-off round of the Champions League qualifying stages is currently being held. Here are the current scores of the two-legged affairs, with the return fixtures being played today.<\/p>\n
All pots will be confirmed on August 26, once the final qualifiers have taken place.<\/p>\n
WHEN IS THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE DRAW?<\/h2>\n\n\n<\/article>\n<\/article>\nThe draw will take place on Thursday, August 27, 2026, where we will find out the eight teams we will face in the opening stage.<\/p>\n
The league phase matches will take place on September 8-10, October 13-14, October 20-21, November 3-4, November 24-25, December 8-9, January 19-20 and January 27.<\/p>\n
The draw for the knockout play-offs rounds will be carried out on January 29, 2027, with the two legs taking place on February 16-17 and February 23-24.<\/p>\n
Following that, the draw for the round of 16, quarter-finals, semi-finals and final will all be held on February 26, 2026. <\/p>\n
The round of 16 matches will occur on March 9-10 and March 16-17. Quarter-final matches will be held on April 6-7 and April 13-14, before the semi-finals on April 27-28 and May 4-5. The final will take place on Saturday, June 5, 2027, at the Wanda Metropolitano in Madrid, Spain.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Copyright 2026 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Having reached our second Champions League final last season, we can start looking ahead to the 2026\/27 campaign. We lost out to Paris Saint-Germain on penalties in Budapest but after … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3810,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
There are a number of rules surrounding the Champions League draw. One is that we cannot face fellow Premier League teams. This means we will not play Liverpool, Manchester City, Chelsea, Newcastle United or Tottenham at this stage of the competition.<\/p>\n
The four pots are determined by UEFA club coefficient. While all pots are yet to be filled, it has been confirmed that we will be in pot 1 for this draw, alongside Paris Saint-Germain, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Liverpool, Inter Milan, Manchester City, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid.<\/p>\n
Pot 2 consists of Borussia Dortmund, AS Roma, Sporting CP, Porto, Club Brugge, Real Betis, PSV Eindhoven and Premier League sides, Aston Villa and Manchester United.<\/p>\n
Feyenoord, Lille, Napoli, RB Leipzig, Villarreal, Shakhtar Donetsk and Galatasaray will all be in pot 3.<\/p>\n
While Como and Lens will be in pot 4, Slavia Prague, Stuttgart and the remaining seven qualifiers are yet to be assigned to either pot 3 or pot 4.<\/p>\n
We will play two teams from each pot, one at home and one away, and we also cannot be drawn against more than two teams from the same country.<\/p>\n
The play-off round of the Champions League qualifying stages is currently being held. Here are the current scores of the two-legged affairs, with the return fixtures being played today.<\/p>\n
All pots will be confirmed on August 26, once the final qualifiers have taken place.<\/p>\n
WHEN IS THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE DRAW?<\/h2>\n\n\n<\/article>\n<\/article>\nThe draw will take place on Thursday, August 27, 2026, where we will find out the eight teams we will face in the opening stage.<\/p>\n
The league phase matches will take place on September 8-10, October 13-14, October 20-21, November 3-4, November 24-25, December 8-9, January 19-20 and January 27.<\/p>\n
The draw for the knockout play-offs rounds will be carried out on January 29, 2027, with the two legs taking place on February 16-17 and February 23-24.<\/p>\n
Following that, the draw for the round of 16, quarter-finals, semi-finals and final will all be held on February 26, 2026. <\/p>\n
The round of 16 matches will occur on March 9-10 and March 16-17. Quarter-final matches will be held on April 6-7 and April 13-14, before the semi-finals on April 27-28 and May 4-5. The final will take place on Saturday, June 5, 2027, at the Wanda Metropolitano in Madrid, Spain.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Copyright 2026 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Having reached our second Champions League final last season, we can start looking ahead to the 2026\/27 campaign. We lost out to Paris Saint-Germain on penalties in Budapest but after … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3810,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The draw will take place on Thursday, August 27, 2026, where we will find out the eight teams we will face in the opening stage.<\/p>\n
The league phase matches will take place on September 8-10, October 13-14, October 20-21, November 3-4, November 24-25, December 8-9, January 19-20 and January 27.<\/p>\n
The draw for the knockout play-offs rounds will be carried out on January 29, 2027, with the two legs taking place on February 16-17 and February 23-24.<\/p>\n
Following that, the draw for the round of 16, quarter-finals, semi-finals and final will all be held on February 26, 2026. <\/p>\n
The round of 16 matches will occur on March 9-10 and March 16-17. Quarter-final matches will be held on April 6-7 and April 13-14, before the semi-finals on April 27-28 and May 4-5. The final will take place on Saturday, June 5, 2027, at the Wanda Metropolitano in Madrid, Spain.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Copyright 2026 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Having reached our second Champions League final last season, we can start looking ahead to the 2026\/27 campaign. We lost out to Paris Saint-Germain on penalties in Budapest but after … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3810,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}