Champions League and Europa League draws take place this week

This season's UEFA competitions come into focus this week, as the draws for the upcoming Champions League and Europa League league phases are set to take place.

Notice I said 'league phase' rather than group stage, as things are a bit different for this season. As well as the awkward repetition of 'league' when referring to the 'Champions League league phase', there are some other new things that are going to take some getting used to for 2024/25.

Within a few days of the draws taking place, we will have Predictor games ready for you to join for both the Champions League and the Europa League.

In the meantime, using the Champions League as the example, here's how the revamped format will work. The Europa League will adopt very similar format changes.

New Champions League format for 2024-25

The main reason for the change in format ahead of this season is to create more fixtures (I know, there's already a lot), and especially more frequent fixtures between the big clubs to generate more money (already a lot of that too). As a result, the league phase will consist of 8 rounds rather than 6, with the 2 extra rounds scheduled for late January which used to be a Champions League-free month.

Rather than being divided into 8 groups of 4, there are now 36 teams included instead of 32 and there are no groups at all. Instead, all teams will compete on a single giant league table, with the 8 fixtures each club are guaranteed to play coming against different opposition as opposed to playing 4 teams home and away.

However, the teams are still seeded into four pots, as this allows for each club to play against two teams in each seeded pot. Defending champions Real Madrid will of course be in Pot 1, and this means they'll face two fellow top seed clubs in this initial league phase as well as 6 lower seeded clubs. As a result, there will be some big fixtures earlier in the tournament than usual because the Pot 1 sides were always kept apart from one another during the previous group stage format.

The league table

As just mentioned, there are 36 teams competing on a single table during the league phase. After the 8 rounds have been played, the top 8 teams on the table will progress straight through to the Round of 16 which will take place in early March.

The 16 teams ranked from 9th-24th on the table will compete in an additional knockout round in February with the 8 teams that are victorious then making up the rest of the Round of 16. Again, this obviously means some extra matches as it's a new round and each knockout play-off tie will be played over two legs.



The clubs that finish in the bottom 12 (25th and below) are eliminated after the league phase.

The draw

The 2024-25 Champions League league phase draw will take place this Thursday (29th August) with the Europa League equivalent a day later on Friday 30th August.

Since this format is a fair bit more complicated in terms of designating opposition to each club rather than a simple 4-team group, UEFA will be using a computer to automatically generate most of the draw to save some time. Those of you that have watched a Champions League draw before might be surprised to hear that doing things swiftly is now a priority.

Each of the 36 teams will still be drawn manually to start with (likely by an ex player, usually Hamit Altintop) before a computer then reveals the teams they will be playing home and away on a big screen.

Confirmed participants

The teams competing in the 2024-25 Champions League are as follows:

🇩🇪 Germany (5): Bayer Leverkusen, Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, RB Leipzig, VfB Stuttgart

🇮🇹 Italy (5): Atalanta, Bologna, Internazionale, Juventus, Milan

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 England (4): Arsenal, Aston Villa, Liverpool, Manchester City

🇪🇸 Spain (4): Atletico Madrid, Barcelona, Girona, Real Madrid

🇫🇷 France (4): Brest, Lille, Monaco, Paris Saint-Germain

🇦🇹 Austria (2): RB Salzburg, Sturm Graz

🇳🇱 Netherlands (2): Feyenoord, PSV

🇵🇹 Portugal (2): Benfica, Sporting CP

🇧🇪 Belgium (1): Club Brugge

🇭🇷 Croatia (1): Dinamo Zagreb

🇨🇿 Czech Republic (1): Sparta Prague

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Scotland (1): Celtic

🇷🇸 Serbia (1): Red Star Belgrade

🇸🇰 Slovakia (1): Slovan Bratislava

🇨🇭 Switzerland (1): Young Boys

🇺🇦 Ukraine (1): Shakhtar Donetsk

Superbru Predictors

The Champions League Predictor is now live and available for you to join.

The Europa League Predictor is also now live for you to join.