It’s been a long summer of football thanks to the 2026 World Cup, but now the UEFA Champions League is back. Almost, anyway.With four rounds of qualifying now over, the league-phase draw will take place today (Thursday, August 27), with the competition proper’s initial stage kicking off on Tuesday, September 8.Last season’s final was one to forget for Arsenal fans as Paris Saint-Germain won their second successive Champions League title, beating the Londoners 4-3 on penalties after a 1-1 draw in Budapest.All 36 qualified teams will be dreaming of reaching the 2026-27 final, which will be played in June at the Metropolitano stadium in Madrid. The league-phase draw will determine how that path unfolds, so let’s have a refresher on how it will all work.When is the Champions League draw?The draw for this year’s league phase is happening today (Thursday, August 27, from 5pm BST/12pm ET) at Grimaldi Forum in Monaco. This follows the final round of qualifying games that concluded the night before.As for the equivalents in the second-tier Europa League and third-tier Conference League, they will take place a day later, starting at 12pm BST on Friday, August 28.To watch the draw, you can find it on UEFA’s website, UEFA.com. For readers in the United Kingdom, it will also be available on TNT Sports 1 and the TNT Sports YouTube channel.(Harold Cunningham/AFP via Getty Images)How does the Champions League draw work?The 36 teams are divided into four pots of nine based on their UEFA club coefficient rankings, which are determined by performance over the past five years, with Pot 1 being for the highest-rated sides and Pot 4 containing the lowest.Starting with Pot 1, balls representing each club will be drawn out individually, usually by former or current football stars who are special guests of the ceremony. UEFA’s supercomputer then automates the team’s league-phase opponents, who will consist of two from each of the pots — making eight matches in total, with four of them to be played at home and four away. However, no sides from the same country can meet in this initial stage.Which pot is each team in?Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester City are in Pot 1, along with back-to-back European champions PSG plus Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atletico Madrid and Inter.Manchester United and last season’s Europa League winners Aston Villa, both in Pot 2, are the only English teams not in Pot 1.In Pot 4 are Champions League debutants Como (Italy), Sabah (Azerbaijan), LASK (Austria), Viking (Norway) and Slovan Bratislava (Slovakia).Pot 1