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The 2026/27 Champions League campaign is due to begin in September, with the clubs still waiting to find out who they will face.

The Champions League is scheduled to start on Tuesday, September 8, but before that UEFA must deal with the crucial business of conducting the draw for the league phase.

Thirty-six teams will feature in the first proper round of the competition, with the clubs that come through the qualifying play-offs joining the sides that have already secured automatic qualification.

Here is everything you need to know about how the Champions League draw will operate when it is held on Thursday, August 27 at 5pm UK time.

You may already know the format, but as a quick reminder, 36 teams will take part in one large league table, with every side being drawn to play eight different opponents.

After all the matches have been completed, the top eight teams will qualify directly for the round of 16, while the clubs finishing from ninth to 24th will face each other in a knockout phase play-off. The bottom 12 teams will be knocked out.

The key question, then, is how each club's set of eight matches is decided.

The 36 teams are split into four pots containing nine teams each, based on their UEFA coefficient, which is effectively a ranking score reflecting how well a team has performed over recent years, largely in European competition.

Each club will be randomly assigned two fixtures against teams from each of the four pots, with one restriction in place: teams from the same country cannot meet one another during the league phase.

The pots are listed below, with the places marked TBD to be taken by the play-off winners. Slavia Prague's pot placement will depend on which teams progress through the play-offs.

Pot 1

Pot 2

Pot 3

Pot 4

PSG

Borussia Dortmund

Feyenoord

Stuttgart

Bayern Munich

Roma

Lille

Como

Real Madrid

Sporting

Napoli

Lens

RB Leipzig

Inter

Porto

Villarreal

Shakhtar

Club Brugge

Galatasaray

Barcelona

Real Betis

Atletico Madrid

PSV

So, for instance, and purely as an example, Liverpool could be randomly drawn to face Real Madrid and Inter from Pot 1, Club Brugge and Sporting from Pot 2, Feyenoord and Shakhtar from Pot 3, and Como and Lens from Pot 4.

Beginning with the teams in Pot 1 and then continuing downwards, balls will be drawn only to determine the sequence in which the teams receive their draw.

UEFA's computer will then assign all eight fixtures to that team in one go. It will then move on to the next club and repeat the process, continuing in that manner until all 36 teams know the full list of their eight matches.

The precise dates for each fixture will then be finalised in the days after the draw.

The play-off ties are as follows, with the winner of each two-legged contest qualifying for the league phase:

Levski Sofia vs AEK Athens

Celtic vs LASK

Dinamo Zagreb vs Viking

Slovan Bratislava vs Celje

Hapoel Be'er Sheva vs Sabah

Fenerbahce vs Lyon

NEC vs Bodo/Glimt

Atletico Madrid's Estadio Metropolitano will stage the 2027 Champions League final at the end of the campaign.