The Uefa Champions League Draw for the 2026/27 phase league takes place at 18:00 on Thursday 27 August in Monaco, and it already fixes the Spanish shape of the competition. Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atlético de Madrid are in pot 1, Betis is in pot 2 and Villarreal is in pot 3.
That matters now because the draw is the point at which the new league phase stops being a calendar and becomes a route. Five Spanish teams are in the four pots, and the match list each side will face for the next eight rounds begins to take form the moment the balls come out.
Pellegrini has a particular stake in it. Betis are back in the top continental competition 20 years later, and they arrive in pot 2 with the kind of reward that comes from getting into the stronger seeding band. Villarreal’s place in pot 3 tells the opposite story after a poor league phase last year, when they finished penultimate with only one point.
The structure is fixed. Each team will play eight matches against two rivals from each of the four pots, with no draw pairing allowed against a club from the same country and no team permitted to meet more than two sides from the same country. Some pairings that were already played in the last two seasons are also blocked, including Real Madrid-Liverpool.
That is why the exact opponent list is the part everyone is waiting for, even if it will not be known on Thursday. The calendar with dates and kick-off times for the eight matchdays has to be announced no later than Saturday 29 August, and the first round will be spread across 8 September, 9 September and 10 September, running through to 27 January.
The draw also points straight at the final. The Champions League final will be played at the Metropolitano in Madrid on Saturday 5 June 2027, the stadium’s second time hosting it after Liverpool beat Tottenham 2-0 there in 2019 to win their sixth title. For the Spanish clubs in Monaco, the road starts with the pots; for everyone else, it ends in Madrid.
