The draw for the 2025/26 UEFA Champions League has been made in Monaco, and if you were hoping your club landed a comfortable run, you’re probably already disappointed. This is the second season under UEFA’s overhauled format, and the fixtures it has thrown up are, to put it plainly, brutal across the board.
The old group stage is gone. In its place is a 36-team single league, where every club plays eight matches four at home, four away against eight different opponents. Finish in the top eight and you walk straight into the round of 16. Land between ninth and 24th and you face a playoff for the privilege. Below 24th, you’re done.
It’s a format designed to produce more meaningful games earlier in the competition. The draw has done exactly that.
PSG Defend Their Title Against an Unforgiving Fixture List
Paris Saint-Germain arrive as holders, and UEFA has rewarded them accordingly with no mercy whatsoever. The French champions will face Bayern Munich, Barcelona, Tottenham Hotspur, and Atalanta in their league phase fixtures. There is not a soft touch among them.
Retaining the Champions League has historically been one of football’s hardest feats, and PSG’s draw has done nothing to make that task easier.
Real Madrid Clashes With Liverpool and City
For all the talk of Real Madrid’s experience in this competition, their draw this season is nothing to take lightly. Los Blancos will meet Liverpool and Manchester City, renew acquaintances with Juventus, and perhaps most unusually travel to Kazakhstan to face competition newcomers Kairat Almaty.
It is the kind of fixture that sounds straightforward on paper but carries its own logistical and psychological complications. A 15-time European champion flying to Central Asia mid-season is not something Xabi Alonso would have circled as a favourite trip.
Premier League Clubs Each Face Their Own Kind of Difficult
English football is well represented in the competition this season, and each of the Premier League sides has been handed a draw that will test them in different ways.
Arsenal will measure themselves against two of Europe’s most storied clubs in Bayern Munich and Inter Milan. Manchester City, still chasing back to back titles following their 2023 triumph, will come up against Real Madrid and Napoli. Liverpool have a particularly demanding schedule hosting Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid at Anfield while also making difficult away trips to Inter Milan and Eintracht Frankfurt.
Tottenham, fresh from winning last season’s Europa League, find themselves in a Champions League group that includes a Super Cup rematch against PSG and an away trip to Norwegian debutants Bodø/Glimt, a fixture that will draw comparisons to some of the continent’s more memorable giant-killing nights in recent years.
Bayern’s Draw Reads Like a Greatest Hits of Recent Finals
There’s an almost cinematic quality to Bayern Munich’s fixture list. Their campaign includes a rematch with Chelsea, the 2012 Champions League final and a showdown with PSG, who defeated them in the 2020 decider. Whether it’s UEFA’s hand or pure chance, Bayern’s path through the league phase will feel like unfinished business from the start.
When Does It All Begin and Where Does It End?
The league phase kicks off between September 16 and 18, 2025, with clubs playing their eight fixtures across the autumn and winter months before the knockout rounds take shape.
The final will be held at the Puskás Arena in Budapest, Hungary, on May 30, 2026 a fitting stage for what promises, given this draw, to be one of the most competitive Champions League seasons in recent memory.
