StGermain

European champions Paris St-Germain will face Premier League duo Manchester City and Aston Villa as well as five-time winners Barcelona in the league phase of this season’s Champions League.

The back-to-back Champions League winners will welcome Barca to Parc des Princes, while they were also handed trips to Villa Park and Manchester in the draw for the league phase.

Premier League champions Arsenal, meanwhile, will host 15-time winners Real Madrid at Emirates Stadium, and have also been handed a trip to Bayern Munich.

Mikel Arteta’s men, who were beaten by PSG on penalties in the final last season, will face Borussia Dortmund, Real Betis, Lille, Napoli, Azerbaijan champions Sabah and Slavia Prague as well.

Enzo Maresca’s City will welcome PSG to Etihad Stadium and travel to Barcelona, where they will have a reunion with Spanish World Cup-winner Rodri, who moved to the Nou Camp in a £65m deal this summer.

City will also be up against another of their former midfielders in Kevin de Bruyne when Napoli visit Manchester, with Sporting, Porto, RB Leipzig, AEK Athens and Lens their other opponents.

Europa League winners Villa, returning to the competition after a season away, will host PSG and Dortmund and travel to Barcelona and Galatasaray.

Unai Emery’s side also face Club Brugge, Fenerbahce, Viking and Slavia Prague.

Manchester United, returning after a two-year hiatus, will meet Bayern, Atletico Madrid, Roma, Sporting, Leipzig, Villarreal, Sabah and Como.

Liverpool, meanwhile, host Atletico, Porto, Villarreal and Lens while visiting Inter Milan, Brugge, Fenerbahce and LASK.

The first league-phase matches will be played on Tuesday, 8 September and the last round of games will take place on 27 January 2027, with the exact schedule to be released on Saturday.

This season’s final will be held in Madrid on 5 June.

After years and years of failure and billions of pounds spent, Paris St-Germain finally won the Champions League in 2025.

And then they became one of only two teams to win consecutive Champions League trophies.

They hammered Inter Milan 5-0 in Munich in 2025 and then beat Arsenal on penalties in Budapest this year.

Only Real Madrid had won the Champions League back-to-back before – winning three in a row from 2016 to 2018.

It is something even the great teams like Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona or Manchester City, or Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United, or various Bayern Munich sides have not done.

Joining Real on three is the aim for Luis Enrique’s side this season.

Going back to the start, only three other teams have managed to win three consecutive European Cups – Real Madrid, who won the first five from 1956 to 1960, and Ajax and Bayern Munich both in the 1970s.

In fact if you stretch it out to three European Cups in five years you would only have to add Liverpool (1977, 1978, 1981) to that list.