The Champions League is back! and Europe’s top flight club competition has been given a drastic makeover.
This year’s competition will feature more teams, more games and a whole new format for the upcoming season and fans won’t have to wait much longer to see the new layout in action.
Arsenal, Aston Villa, Liverpool and Manchester City, the four Premier League clubs involved will soon learn their fate regarding which teams await them in the new-look league stage replacing the group stage.
The new format is the biggest shake-up to the tournament since the 2002-03 season which witnessed the abolition of the second group stage.
Here is everything you need to know about the 2024-25 Champions League draw including date, time, where to watch, the teams involved and the new format explained.
The Champions League draw will take place next Thursday, August 29
This season there will be 36 teams in the competition instead of 32
When is the Champions League draw?
The draw for the opening stage of the 2024-25 Champions League will take place on Thursday, August 29.
A time has yet to be given for the draw but UEFA revealed that the draw would be held at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco.
However going based on previous years, UEFA tend to schedule their draws either around 11pm UK time or 5pm Uk time.
This year’s draw will use automated software to decide each teams opponents at random, with each side fixed to play eight games before progressing to the next stage of the competition.
How the fixture selection will work is one team for pot 1 will be manually drawn out of a bowl, with their opponents being decided by automated software. This process will continue until each team is allocated with eight games.
This year’s draw will use automated software to decide each teams opponents at random
Where to watch
This year’s Champions League draw will be live streamed for free on UEFA’s official website.
And will also be available to watch on UEFA’s various broadcasting partner networks. In the UK it will be on TNT Sports.
For US fans, the draw can be accessed either on UEFA’s official website or via Paramount.
New Champions League format explained
The first change to this season’s Champions League will see 36 teams take part in the competition instead of 32.
The expansion of the League by adding four extra teams has forced UEFA to reformat how the group stage works. This year’s group stage competition will consist of a single league table instead of the familiar eight groups of four teams each.
Although the new format has been developed into a League style table, each team will only play eight games, coming up against a new side each time.
The sides will play an equal amount of games at home and away, meaning they will play four home and four away.
This means that this seasons teams will play two games more than they played in last year’s competition.
Manchester City have been seeded in Pot alongside Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Liverpool
Liverpool are making their valiant return to the Champions League after missing out last year
Once all the games have concluded, the eight teams at the top of the table will automatically be awarded with a spot in the last-16 of the competition.
Whilst the sides that finish from 9th to 24th will be drawn against one another in a knockout play-off round for the right to join the other eight teams in the round-of-16.
The bottom twelve teams will be eliminated from the competition and Europe all together as they will not be demoted to the Europa League which was the case the past few years.
From there the competition will follow the same style as previous years, with all knockout games being contested both home and away.
In order to keep UEFA’s integrity around the competition and ensure each team receives a fair run of games, UEFA have put teams in seeding pots ahead of the draw.
Seeding pots explained
Ahead of the draw taking place next Thursday, UEFA have divided all of the 36 clubs into four pots based on their club coefficients at the start of the 2024-25 seasons.
How the draw will unfold is that each team will play two sides from each pot, one home game and one away game. Which game the teams play home and away will be randomised by the automated software.
So as an example Manchester City’s eight games could look like the following Bayern Munich (Pot 1), Real Madrid (Pot 1), Benfica (Pot 2), Juventus (Pot 2), Feyenoord (Pot 3), Celtic (Pot 3), Monaco (Pot 4) and Brest (Pot 4).
Aston Villa solidified their spot in Europe’s top tier club competition after finishing fourth in the Premier League last season
What has UEFA said about the new format?
In an explainer posted by UEFA, they detailed ‘In the new league format, every match, every goal, every point and position in the rank counts.
‘The new system will ensure fast-changing and unpredictable standings, more matches between equally ranked teams competing for crucial points, with fans able to enjoy top clashes right from the first match day’.
2024-25 Champions League schedule
League stage:
Matchday 1: 17–19 September, 2024 Matchday 2: 1-2 October, 2024Matchday 3: 22-23 October, 2024Matchday 4: 5-6 November, 2024Matchday 5: 26-27 November, 2024Matchday 6: 10-11 December, 2024Matchday 7: 21-22 January, 2025Matchday 8: 29 January, 2025
Knockout round:
Play-offs: 11-12 and 18-19 February, 2025Round of 16: 4-5 and 11-12 March, 2025Quarter-finals: 8-9 and 15-16 April, 2025Semi-finals: 29-30 April and 6-7 May 2025Final: 31 May, 2025