2026-27 Champions League Draw: PSG Faces Barcelona and Man City, Real Madrid Meets Arsenal
The 36 clubs competing in the 2026-27 UEFA Champions League now know their opponents for the league phase, after the draw was held on Thursday, August 27, at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco.
Two-time reigning champions Paris Saint-Germain were drawn against Barcelona and Manchester City among their eight league-phase opponents, as the French club chases a third consecutive European title, a feat that would make them only the fourth club in history to achieve it and the first since Real Madrid completed the same run in 2018. PSG’s path also includes home fixtures against Roma, Galatasaray and Slovan Bratislava, alongside away trips to Aston Villa, Villarreal and Como, in addition to their away match against Manchester City and home meeting with Barcelona.
Real Madrid, 15-time European champions, will face Arsenal and Inter Milan among their own eight opponents, setting up another heavyweight European campaign for the Spanish giants. Elsewhere in the draw, Liverpool were paired with Real Madrid once again, continuing a fixture that has featured in each of the last two league-phase campaigns, when the Reds won 2-0 at Anfield in November 2024 before beating Los Blancos 1-0 a year later. Under UEFA’s new regulations preventing the same individual fixture from being played for three consecutive seasons, that particular pairing could not repeat at Anfield, though Liverpool remained eligible to face Real Madrid away from home in this year’s draw. The rule also affected other clubs with recent history against one another, with Arsenal, for instance, unable to be drawn away to Inter Milan after visiting the San Siro in each of the previous two campaigns.
Now in its third season under the newer league-phase format, the competition sees all 36 qualified clubs placed into a single table, with each team playing eight matches, two apiece against sides drawn from four seeding pots, split evenly between four home and four away fixtures. The draw itself was conducted using a UEFA supercomputer, which automatically selected each side’s eight opponents at the push of a button. Of the 36 places in this year’s competition, 29 clubs qualified directly at the end of last season, with the remaining seven places determined through the qualifying rounds.
Under the format’s knockout qualification rules, the top eight teams in the final league table will progress automatically to the round of 16, while the clubs finishing from ninth through 24th will contest two-legged knockout play-off matches for a place in the last 16. The bottom 12 teams in the standings will be eliminated from the competition altogether.
The league phase is scheduled to begin with Matchday 1 fixtures played between September 8 and 10, 2026, continuing through further matchdays in October, November, December and January, before concluding with Matchday 8 on January 27, 2027. UEFA is expected to confirm the full schedule, including exact kickoff times for each fixture, by Saturday, August 29. The competition will then move into its knockout stages, building toward the final, which is scheduled to be played on June 5, 2027, at the Metropolitano Stadium in Madrid, Spain.
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