The new era of the UEFA Champions League has arrived, and the rearranged draw will be the first sign of how different the competition will be from the coming season.
With the new competition format, a new draw system is also needed. Teams will no longer be divided into groups of four teams, but the rankings for the league stages will be established instead. UEFA will use AI instead of balls and pots to finalize the confrontations.
With the competition having been expanded and reformatted for the 2024/25 season, UEFA has abandoned the old group stage model. The next stage has been dubbed the ‘League Stage’, with UEFA taking inspiration from the Swiss model to determine the matchups and participants in the knockout phase.
THE Jugo Mobile brings you all the essentials on when the draw will take place, where you can follow the process and how it will unfold.
How to watch the 2024 Champions League draw: TV channel, live stream
In the US, you can watch the first draw of the new era exclusively on Paramount+ from CBS Sports. Paramount+ offers a one week free trial for new users.
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For those in territories where no broadcast partner is appointed, the draw can be streamed on UEFA.tv.
When will the 2024 Champions League draw take place?
The draw for the new UEFA Champions League “league phase” will take place on Thursday August 29 at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco. The draw for the Europa League and the Europa Conference League will take place the following day, on Friday 30 August.
Further draws for the Champions League round of 16 will take place in early 2025, as detailed below, when the participants will be determined.
Single-elimination play-offs: January 21, 2025
Round of 16, quarter-final, semi-final: February 21, 2025
What time is the 2024 Champions League draw?
The draw for the 2024/25 Champions League will take place in Monaco on Thursday 29 August at 6 p.m. local time in the principality.
Here’s how that time translates to some of the major U.S. time zones:
| Date | Drawing time | |
| Eastern Time | Thursday August 29 | 12:00 p.m. |
| Central Time | Thursday August 29 | 11am |
| Mountain Time | Thursday August 29 | 10am |
| Pacific Time | Thursday August 29 | 9am |
How the draw for the 2024 Champions League stages will take place
The old group stage has been scrapped and now a “league stage” will be held to determine the eight-match schedule for each of the 36 participants.
As before, all teams will be placed in four pots, determined by the clubs’ UEFA coefficient at the start of the season. The only exception is the reigning Champions League winner, who will be placed in Pot 1 regardless of their ranking. This season, with Real Madrid being the reigning champions, they would have been placed in Pot 1 anyway as one of the most successful and powerful clubs in the world, so this exception is questionable.
Each team will then be drawn against two clubs from each pot, including their own pot, one playing at home and one away. Teams cannot be drawn against other clubs from the same country.
To create the matchups, manually drawing balls into the pots will no longer be a major part of the process. In the new format, it would take a long time to draw all the required factors into the pots.
Instead, the initial team will be drawn randomly, after which AI software will be used to create the matchups and determine the home and away designations. While this will reduce the time it takes to draw, it will likely destroy the aura of impartiality created by a manual draw.
