It’s been a long summer of football thanks to the 2026 World Cup, but now the UEFA Champions League is back. Almost, anyway.

With four rounds of qualifying now over, the league-phase draw will take place today (Thursday, August 27), with the competition proper’s initial stage kicking off on Tuesday, September 8.

Last season’s final was one to forget for Arsenal fans as Paris Saint-Germain won their second successive Champions League title, beating the Londoners 4-3 on penalties after a 1-1 draw in Budapest.

All 36 qualified teams will be dreaming of reaching the 2026-27 final, which will be played in June at the Metropolitano stadium in Madrid. The league-phase draw will determine how that path unfolds, so let’s have a refresher on how it will all work.

When is the Champions League draw?

The draw for this year’s league phase is happening today (Thursday, August 27, from 5pm BST/12pm ET) at Grimaldi Forum in Monaco. This follows the final round of qualifying games that concluded the night before.

As for the equivalents in the second-tier Europa League and third-tier Conference League, they will take place a day later, starting at 12pm BST on Friday, August 28.

To watch the draw, you can find it on UEFA’s website, UEFA.com. For readers in the United Kingdom, it will also be available on TNT Sports 1 and the TNT Sports YouTube channel.

(Harold Cunningham/AFP via Getty Images)

How does the Champions League draw work?

The 36 teams are divided into four pots of nine based on their UEFA club coefficient rankings, which are determined by performance over the past five years, with Pot 1 being for the highest-rated sides and Pot 4 containing the lowest.

Starting with Pot 1, balls representing each club will be drawn out individually, usually by former or current football stars who are special guests of the ceremony. UEFA’s supercomputer then automates the team’s league-phase opponents, who will consist of two from each of the pots — making eight matches in total, with four of them to be played at home and four away. However, no sides from the same country can meet in this initial stage.

Which pot is each team in?

Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester City are in Pot 1, along with back-to-back European champions PSG plus Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atletico Madrid and Inter.

Manchester United and last season’s Europa League winners Aston Villa, both in Pot 2, are the only English teams not in Pot 1.

In Pot 4 are Champions League debutants Como (Italy), Sabah (Azerbaijan), LASK (Austria), Viking (Norway) and Slovan Bratislava (Slovakia).

Pot 1

• Paris Saint-Germain (France)
• Bayern Munich (Germany)
• Real Madrid (Spain)
• Liverpool (England)
• Inter (Italy)
• Manchester City (England)
• Arsenal (England)
• Barcelona (Spain)
• Atletico Madrid (Spain)

Pot 2

• Borussia Dortmund (Germany)
• Roma (Italy)
• Sporting CP (Portugal)
• Aston Villa (England)
• Porto (Portugal)
• Manchester United (England)
• Club Brugge (Belgium)
• Real Betis (Spain)
• PSV (Netherlands)

Pot 3

• Feyenoord (Netherlands)
• Lille (France)
• Bodo/Glimt (Norway)
• Napoli (Italy)
• RB Leipzig (Germany)
• Villarreal (Spain)
• Shakhtar Donetsk (Ukraine)
• Galatasaray (Turkey)
• Fenerbahce (Turkey)

Pot 4

• Slavia Prague (Czech Republic)
• Stuttgart (Germany)
• LASK (Austria)
• Como (Italy)
• Lens (France)
• Sabah (Azerbaijan)
• Viking (Norway)
• Slovan Bratislava (Slovakia)
• AEK Athens (Greece)

When are the fixtures announced?

According to UEFA’s website, all match details, including dates and kick-off times, will be announced by Saturday, August 29.

The league phase starts on Tuesday, September 8, and concludes with an 18-match bonanza, when all 36 teams play simultaneously, on Wednesday, January 27.

Who could each club play?

Each team could play any two opponents from each of the four pots — except any from the same country as them.

A new rule being introduced for 2026-27 places further restrictions on potential opponents, too. Two clubs cannot play the same individual league-phase fixture for three consecutive seasons.

Found in paragraph 16.03 of last season’s Champions League regulations, the rule kicks in now that we are into year three of the tournament’s current format.

“The UEFA Club Competitions Committee has determined an additional condition that may be applicable to the UEFA Champions League draw for the 2026-27 season, deciding that any individual fixture between the same two teams may not be repeated in the same competition with the same home team for three consecutive seasons,” the regulation states.

This affects two of the five English clubs: Arsenal and Liverpool.

Arsenal have played Inter at Milan’s San Siro in the league phase of the Champions League in each of the past two seasons (Carl Recine/Getty Images)

Arsenal have met Inter at Milan’s San Siro in the previous two league phases, a 1-0 loss in November 2024 and a 3-1 victory in January this year. That means they cannot play the reigning Serie A champions away for a third time in a row in the coming league phase, so they will definitely be drawn against one of the other non-English Pot 1 sides — PSG, Bayern, Madrid, Barca or Atletico — away from home, but can still face Inter at the Emirates Stadium in north London.

In the previous two league phases, Liverpool have hosted Madrid and won both matches, 2-0 in November 2024 and 1-0 12 months later. So their Pot 1 opponents at Anfield this time will be PSG (who have visited in the knockout rounds in successive seasons), Bayern, Barca, Atletico or Inter.

NEW YORK — The 2026 U.S. Open has its first champions.

Karolína Muchová and Jakub Menšík, the maroon-clad Czech team that got a last-minute wild-card entry into the mixed doubles competition, walked away with the title late Wednesday night at Arthur Ashe Stadium.

The Czechs overpowered Belinda Bencic of Switzerland and Flavio Cobolli in a match tiebreak to win the $1 million first prize as the clock ticked toward midnight — when most of the capacity crowd of 24,000 had gone home. With a 6-3, 1-6, 10-6 win, the Czechs took home their maiden Grand Slam titles, the status the U.S. Open’s reimagined mixed doubles retains despite its divergence from just about every norm of tennis from start to finish.

“Our outfits made a difference tonight,” Muchová said when it was over.

For a second consecutive year, the new event delivered a mix of successes and shortcomings.

The crowds that flooded the grounds of the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center the past two days lapped it up, especially Day 1. So many of the biggest stars in the sport were in the field then, led by Serena Williams, Novak Djokovic, Carlos Alcaraz and Aryna Sabalenka.

They were joined by some of the best doubles players in the world, setting up the compelling matchups that fans wanted to see.

The USTA even got its overriding wish for the event this year. All four teams that made the semifinals Wednesday featured top singles players, after Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori, the Italian doubles stars who won the title in its original form in 2024, last year took down singles pair after singles pair to retain their title.

This year, the Italians went out in the first round. That said, the singles A-listers were gone after the quarterfinals this time round.

The sentimental favorites, the husband-and-wife duo of Elina Svitolina and Gaël Monfils, fell in the semifinals Wednesday evening, losing a match-deciding tiebreak to Cobolli and Bencic, who came back from a set down.

Muchová and Menšík saved 2 match points in their own semifinal-deciding tiebreak to topple Mirra Andreeva and Andrey Rublev, whose vigor and vibes won the crowd but not the match.

Belinda Bencic and Flavio Cobolli could not complete a comeback from a set down. (Caleb Bowlin / Getty Images)

Menšík, the 20-year-old serving machine, used his size and wingspan to take over the court down the stretch. He and Muchová, the 30-year-old who reached the Wimbledon final last month, did the same early against Bencic and Cobolli.

But just as he did in the semifinal against Monfils and Svitolina, Cobolli sloughed off some early errors and came alive, roping forehands across the court like the player who plowed into the French Open singles final in June.

As Cobolli lifted his game, Bencic lifted hers. She ripped a forehand return on a deciding point to get her team back into the match. They reeled off the next three games, and all of a sudden the evening had its third match-deciding tiebreak in as many matches.

Just like last year, the two semis and the final lasted five hours. Most of the packed crowd that had created so much of the buzz early in the evening had decided more than an hour before they had seen enough.

There seems to be a flaw in a schedule that has the fewest people watching the most important match. When it’s done, there are another 10 minutes spent on setting up a stage in the middle of the court to prepare for an awards ceremony. By then, all but a few hundred of the fans were gone or heading for the exits.

Don’t tell that to Muchová and Menšík, though. This setup suited them just as well as their singles games suit doubles, Menšík with his ripped serve and Muchová with her control at the net. With a blasted ace from Menšík on championship point, the trophy was just a short wait away after a long night.