Sky Sports provides the definitive guide to when the Champions League draw takes place, who is involved and how it can be followed
Thursday 1 October 2020 17:10, UK
The Champions League draw for the 2020/21 season takes place this week, with the quartet of Premier League representatives set to learn their fate.
It was just six short weeks ago that Bayern Munich defeated Paris Saint-Germain in Lisbon to claim their sixth European Cup, but they will begin their defence next month alongside 31 other clubs with dreams of reaching the final at the Ataturk Olympic Stadium in Istanbul next May.
Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Chelsea will all be involved in this season's competition, as Sky Sports explains all you need to know ahead of this week's draw...
The 2020/21 UEFA Champions League group stage draw takes place Thursday at 4pm BST at the RTS studios in Geneva.
The Champions League group stage draw has been moved from Athens and will now be a behind-closed-doors event at UEFA's headquarters in Switzerland.
European football's governing body confirmed the news on Tuesday, saying to stage the event in the Greek capital would "violate public health restrictions and constraints regarding indoor events" in the country.
We will also be live blogging the draw, bringing you all the news as it happens on skysports.com and our app.
The six winners of the play-off ties will join the 26 teams that have already booked their place in the group stage.
There are four teams in each group, one from each 'pot', which theoretically stops the strongest teams from knocking one another out too early.
The top pot, Pot 1, includes last season's Champions League winners Bayern Munich and Europa League winners Sevilla, as well as Liverpool and the rest of the domestic champions from the top-six performing leagues across Europe.
Club coefficient rankings determine Pots 2 to 4 while no team can play a club from their own association, meaning all Premier League clubs will be in different groups.
The Premier League champions Liverpool could still be drawn alongside either Barcelona, Atletico Madrid or Borussia Dortmund while Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea will be keen on avoiding one of the big boys in Pot 1 - Porto and Zenit are the perceived 'easier' top seeds.
RB Leipzig, Inter Milan and Atalanta's presence in Pot 3 throws up the possibility of a 'Group of Death' scenario the English cubs will want to avoid.
Confirmed teams in the draw...
Pot 1: Bayern, Sevilla, Real Madrid, Liverpool, Juventus, Paris Saint-Germain, Zenit Saint Petersburg, Porto.
Pot 2: Barcelona, Atletico Madrid, Manchester City, Manchester United, Shakhtar Donetsk, Borussia Dortmund, Chelsea, Ajax.
Pot 3: RB Leipzig, Inter Milan, Lazio, Atalanta, Dynamo Kiev, Olympiakos, Red Bull Salzburg, Krasnodar
Pot 4: Borussia Monchengladbach, Istanbul Basaksehir, Rennes, Ferencvaros, Midtjylland, Lokomotiv Moscow, Marseille, Club Brugge
The group stages get underway in the week of October 19, with six rounds of group games running through to mid-December.
Whoever is lucky enough to go all the way will go head to head at the Ataturk Olympic Stadium in Istanbul - where Liverpool beat AC Milan back in 2005 - on May 29.
