Champions League Draw 2025-26: Best and Worst Scenarios for Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea, Man City, Spurs and Newcastle

The draw for the league phase of this season’s Champions League takes place on Thursday. Who should the English teams want to face, and who should they hope to avoid?

The UEFA Champions League is back for a second season in its new format. And while much is the same as its debut in 2024-25, this time there are more English teams in the competition than ever before.

Thanks to the strong performances of Premier League sides in Europe last season, five teams (rather than four) qualified through their league position: Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester City, Chelsea and Newcastle. Then, Tottenham were added to the pile thanks to their Europa League triumph.

The league-phase format remains the same as last term: each of the 36 teams plays eight games, facing two teams from each of the four pots. The top eight qualify for the round of 16, and the teams finishing between ninth and 24th go into a play-off round to make the last 16.

No teams from the same nation can face off in the league phase, and no team can play more than two clubs from any single country.

Champions League Draw 2025-26 Pots

Pot 1: Paris Saint-Germain, Real Madrid, Manchester City, Bayern Munich, Liverpool, Internazionale, Chelsea, Borussia Dortmund, Barcelona.

Pot 2: Arsenal, Bayer Leverkusen, Atlético Madrid, Benfica, Atalanta, Villarreal, Juventus, Eintracht Frankfurt, Club Brugge.

Pot 3: Tottenham Hotspur, PSV, Ajax, Napoli, Sporting CP, Olympiakos, Slavia Prague, Bodø/Glimt, Marseille.

Pot 4: Copenhagen, Monaco, Galatasaray, Union Saint-Gilloise, Qarabag, Athletic Bilbao, Newcastle, Pafos, Kairat.

What Can We Learn from Last Season?

Just like the old Champions League format, there isn’t all that much to take from the league phase.

It was generally agreed before a ball was kicked that avoiding the extra two-legged play-off round was preferable, but as it turned out, it made little difference, as four of the eight round-of-16 ties were won by play-off winners. In other words, half the teams that made the quarter-finals did so after going via the play-offs.

And PSG won the whole thing after going via the play-offs. Having seen off Brest in their play-off, they faced Liverpool, who finished top of the league phase and were, at the time, the favourites to win the Champions League according to the Opta supercomputer. Going into the play-offs clearly didn’t hurt them, while Liverpool’s reward for finishing top of the league phase was a round-of-16 tie against the best team in the world, which they lost.

The eventual champions, PSG, had finished 15th in the league phase after being given the toughest set of eight fixtures of all 36 teams, according to our analysis following the draw this time last year.

Meanwhile, Barcelona had the fourth-easiest set of fixtures, finished second in the table and so avoided the play-offs, but they fell at the semi-final hurdle. Atlético Madrid had the 12th-easiest fixtures, finished fifth in the league and then crashed out in the round of 16.

The main lesson is therefore simple: all that matters is getting through.

That being said, everyone would still prefer a favourable draw.

Dream Draw for Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea, Man City, Spurs and Newcastle

As every club plays two teams from each pot and the English sides can’t play one another, the best possible draw is the same for all six teams. That’s assuming we’re talking entirely objectively and not considering any particular bogey sides any of them might have.

We can do just that and put an objective value on the difficulty of every possible draw using the Opta Power Rankings.

If you’re not across the Opta Power Rankings (where have you been?!), then, put simply, they rank 13,000 teams on the same scale, allowing us to compare the quality of teams from different leagues, countries and associations. The scale runs from 0 to 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world. Currently, Liverpool (rating of 100) are the best team in the world.

We can therefore find the two lowest-ranked teams from each of the above pots to say exactly which eight opponents would represent the easiest possible draw.

Borussia Dortmund, ranked 26th in the world, are the most favourable of the Pot 1 opponents. Last season’s beaten finalists, Inter (10th), rank second-lowest from that pot, with the other seven teams in Pot 1 all in the top eight in the world at the time of writing.

From Pot 2, the best possible opponents based on their Power Ranking are Eintracht Frankfurt, who are ranked 41st in the world, and Villarreal, who are 33rd.

In Pot 3, it would be best to be drawn against Bodø/Glimt, who make their debut appearance in the competition after a surprise run to the Europa League semi-finals last season. They are ranked 73rd in the world, but their home record is so strong that it may be preferable to avoid a trip up to the Article Circle to play on their artificial pitch. The second-kindest team to face from Pot 3 is Ajax, who are down in 66th in the world after a disappointing couple of years.

In Pot 4, there are three Champions League debutants in Union Saint-Gilloise of Belgium, Pafos of Cyprus and Kairat of Kazakhstan. Kairat are, according to the Opta Power Rankings, the team that everyone should want to face.

At the time of writing, they are ranked 474th in the world which, for context, puts them between Luton Town and Wycombe Wanderers. (They dropped one place overnight since the above article was written.)

The other Pot 4 team to hope to face is Qarabag of Azerbaijan, who are 172nd in the world.

Best Possible Draw for the English Sides

Borussia Dortmund

Internazionale

Eintracht Frankfurt

Villarreal

Bodø/Glimt

Ajax

Kairat

Pafos

Nightmare Draw for Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea, Man City, Spurs and Newcastle

Using the same method, we can also look at the most difficult possible draw for the English contingent.

Surprisingly enough, the Champions League includes most of the best teams in the world.

Given there are three English teams in Pot 1, the Premier League sides have a greater chance of playing last season’s champions, PSG, than teams from any other country.

Currently third in the world according to the Opta Power Rankings, they are the team to avoid. Barcelona, who are fifth in the world, would represent the next-most difficult draw.

In Pots 2, 3 and 4, England have the highest-ranked teams in Arsenal (second), Tottenham (15th) and Newcastle (ninth).

But the teams for the English contingent to avoid are still formidable. In Pot 2, it is Benfica (13th) and, perhaps surprisingly, Club Brugge, who have shot up the rankings in the past 12 months, having fared well in last season’s competition, when they made it to the round of 16. They are now ranked as the 19th-best team in the world, just ahead of Atlético Madrid in 22nd.

From Pot 3, Napoli (17th) and Sporting (20th) would represent the most difficult draw, while in Pot 4, Union Saint-Gilloise (32nd) and Athletic Bilbao (35th) are the teams to avoid according to the Power Rankings.

Worst Possible Draw for the English Sides

Paris Saint-Germain

Barcelona

Benfica

Club Brugge

Napoli

Sporting CP

Union Saint-Gilloise

Athletic Club

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