Newcastle United and the Champions League draw – All you need to know | OneFootball

The 2025/26 Champions League draw takes place at 5pm (UK time) today (Thursday 28 August 2025) for Newcastle United and the other 35 clubs.

This is the draw for the league phase and will be held in Monaco.

The Champions League draw of the 36 clubs is made up by 27 teams that qualified via league positions, the winners of the 2024/25 Champions League and Europa League, plus the seven clubs that progressed out of qualifying.

Apart from PSG who as Champions League holders are given the very top spot, the other 35 clubs are then listed according to their individual UEFA club coefficient ranking.

So in pot one you have PSG and the eight clubs with the highest UEFA coefficient ranking, pot two the next highest nine coefficients and so on.

Newcastle United come 34th on the list with only Pafos and Kairat Almaty having lower UEFA coefficients. Basically, the more you play in European competitions and the better you do over the previous five seasons in Europe, the higher your coefficient and seeding.

This Champions League draw info via BBC Sport:

Starting with pot one, each team will be drawn out individually. They will then be selected eight opponents via Uefa’s automated software.

A team will play eight games in total, including two teams from each pot – one home and one away.

No group stage fixtures can be played against teams from the same country, nor more than two against teams from any another country.

This procedure will continue until the fixtures for all 36 teams have been decided.

The Champions League fixture list with match dates and kick-off times will be published no later than Saturday, 30 August.

This additional more detailed and nuanced explanation from ESPN makes things clearer…

We now have 36 teams, but they are no longer drawn into groups. Instead, we have the Champions League “League Phase.” All clubs are in one big league table.

So, how does it work?

• Teams are drawn to play eight fixtures, four at home and four away • Teams in positions 25 to 36 are eliminated in January • The 16 teams in positions 9 through to 24 play in the knockout phase playoffs, in February, to earn a place in the round of 16 • The top eight go straight through to the round of 16, played in March

Ok, so how are the fixtures created?

Rather than groups, the Champions League draw on Thursday, Aug. 28 (5 p.m. UK / midday ET) will create individual eight-game fixture lists for each of the 36 participants.

Not much has changed in how the draw looks on paper, as there are still four pots of teams that contain nine clubs rather than eight. But there are still some notable adjustments given the expanded field.

Pot 1 used to house the holders of the Champions League and Europa League, plus the champions of the top six domestic leagues. Pots 2 through 4 would then be ordered by strength based on UEFA’s club coefficient, which ranks clubs on performance in Europe over the previous five seasons.

Now only the Champions League titleholders (Paris Saint-Germain) are automatically in Pot 1, all other positions are based upon the UEFA club coefficient. This is intended to give a sliding scale of strength down through the pots, so teams face two opponents from each bracket.

However, the new Champions League format means the pot you are in has less relevance, as teams are drawn to play two clubs from their own pot. Under the old system, being in Pot 1 could give you a more generous draw, as you couldn’t play teams from the strongest pot in the group phase.

There are two main principles to the draw this season:

• No club can play another team from their own league (for example, Arsenal can’t play Liverpool) • A club can play no more than two teams from one country (so Arsenal if draw Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund they would then be unable to face Eintracht Frankfurt)

And there’s a twist. With six Premier League teams in the Champions League, and three of those in Pot 1, UEFA needs to prevent a “deadlock” scenario. What does that mean? Well, the draw could not be completed within the above constraints.

In simple terms: English clubs cannot play against each other so to avoid a “deadlock” with this clause, the non-English clubs in Pot 1 must all play two Premier League teams — either from Pot 1, Arsenal, Newcastle United or Tottenham. Make sense?

In effect, it means Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, Inter Milan, Paris Saint-Germain and Real Madrid could get, on paper, a slightly harder set of fixtures. And that’s more so for a team that faces Arsenal, Tottenham and/or Newcastle plus two non-English teams from Pot 1.

Think of it this way. If Bayern get to Pot 4 and up to that point they have only drawn one English team, they must play Newcastle — when on paper the likes of Pafos and Kairat Almaty would be more favourable. And if they were to also draw Athletic Club, that clearly presents a much tougher fixture list than others in Pot 1 may get.

Added to that, the three English teams in Pot 1 cannot draw Newcastle, so have a higher chance of more favourable fixtures from Pot 4.

The draw ceremony is noticeably different, too. In previous seasons, the fates of all teams would be decided by a manual draw, with balls and pots for teams and groups, by a parade of former Champions League players. But the new format is so complicated that it would take over three hours and require 1,296 balls to complete in the same way.

• A team is drawn by an ex-player on stage (starting with Pot 1 and ending with Pot 4) • A computer randomly selects that club’s eight opponents (subject to the constraints of the draw), also determining which match is to be played home or away

The pots might not be so crucial, but they still have relevance as each contains a range of quality. The distribution of home and away games is also important given the range of possible opponents for each club.