All you need to know about Thursday’s Champions League group stage draw
32 clubs will learn their fate in Istanbul when the eight groups for the 2022-23 season will be drawn on Thursday evening.
We now know 29 of the 32 participating sides who will participate in the 2022-23 UEFA Champions League after Maccabi Haifa progressed to the group stage for the first time since 2009 with a dramatic late goal in Belgrade. Viktoria Plzen and Benfica also advanced defeating Qarabag and Dynamo Kyiv respectively.
The final three teams to complete the 32 will be decided on Wednesday night with the winners from Dinamo Zagreb-Bodo Glimt, PSV-Rangers and Trabzonspor-Copenhagen advancing.
The draw itself for the group stage of the 2022-23 competition will be held on Thursday (25 August) in Istanbul (6 pm CEST / 12 noon ET).
How the Champions League draw works
The draw will features 32 teams with 26 teams given direct entry to the group stage along with the six play-off winners. These teams will be split into four seeding pots. Pot 1 will consist of the holders, the UEFA Europa League winners and the champions of the six highest-ranked nations who did not qualify via one of the 2021/22 titles; Pots 2 to 4 will be determined by the club coefficient rankings.
In the case of associations with two representatives, clubs will be paired in order to split their matches between Tuesdays and Wednesdays. In the case of associations with four representatives, two pairings will be made. These pairings are to be based on TV audiences.
No team can play a side from their own association.
2022-23 Champions League matchday dates
The staging of the World Cup in Qatar this November has forced UEFA to condense the staging of the six matchdays that comprise the group stage with the first round of games getting underway on 6 September. The draw for the Round of 16 will be staged at the UEFA Nyon offices on 7 November.
- Matchday 1: 6/7 September
- Matchday 2: 13/14 September
- Matchday 3: 4/5 October
- Matchday 4: 11/12 October
- Matchday 5: 25/26 October
- Matchday 6: 1/2 November
Further related reading:
2022-23 final venue and date
Istanbul’s Ataturk stadium will finally get to host a Champions League final again (Liverpool fans fondly remember the last time the Turkish stadium hosted the showpiece game in 2005).
The game at the 75,000 capacity stadium will take place on 10 June (2023) with the venue supposed to host the 2020 final which eventually took place in Lisbon due to the Covid-19 pandemic.