Women's Champions League group stage draw: Holders Lyon get Arsenal and Juventus, Paris drawn with Real Madrid and Chelsea

UEFA Women's Champions League holders Lyon are in a group with Arsenal and Juventus while Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain and Real Madrid are all in the same section after the draw was made.

Holders Lyon and fellow direct entrants Wolfsburg, Chelsea and Paris Saint-Germain were joined in the draw by the 12 round 2 winners. Fixtures will run between 19 October and 22 December.

• Lyon claimed their record eighth title last season.
• Other past champions involved are Wolfsburg (2012/13 and 2013/14), Arsenal (2006/07) and last season's runners-up Barcelona (2020/21).
• Paris (who like Wolfsburg fell in the last four in 2021/22) and Chelsea are also past finalists.
• Arsenal, Bayern, Juventus and Madrid reached the quarter-finals last season.
• Benfica and Chelsea were also involved in the first group stage a year ago.
• Albania, Austria and Czechia were not represented in the group stage last season; Denmark, Iceland and Ukraine have missed out this time after having teams in 2020/21.
• Vllaznia are the first Albanian team to get to the last 16 of this competition in any format (and the first Albanian club to get to the last 16 of any UEFA competition since KF Tirana in the 1989/90 men's European Cup).
• Bayern and Rosengård have previously made the semis; Slavia are three-time quarter-finalists.
• Roma are in their debut European campaign.

UEFA Women's Champions League season calendar

Group stage
Matchday 1: 19/20 October
Matchday 2: 26/27 October
Matchday 3: 23/24 November
Matchday 4: 7/8 December
Matchday 5: 15/16 December
Matchday 6: 21/22 December

Quarter-final & semi-final draw
13:00 CET, 10 February. Nyon

Quarter-finals
First leg: 21/22 March
Second leg: 29/30 March

Semi-finals
First leg: 22/23 April
Second leg: 29/30 April

Final (PSV Stadion, Eindhoven)
3 or 4 June tbc

UEFA Women's Champions League group stage draw procedure

For the purpose of the draw, the 16 clubs involved in the group stage were seeded into four pots of four.

Pot 1 consisted of the holders and the three domestic champions of the associations ranked highest in the access list (France, Germany and England). As the holders (Lyon) are also the domestic champion of one of the top-three associations (France), the group was completed with the champions of the association ranked fourth in the access list (Spain), hence Barcelona joining Lyon, Wolfsburg and Chelsea.

The remaining pots were composed in accordance with the club coefficient rankings established at the beginning of the season.

Four groups of four teams were formed, each group consisting of one team from each seeding pot. Clubs from the same association could not be drawn into the same group.

Clubs from countries with severe winter conditions (Sweden) were assigned a position in their group which allowed them to play away on Matchday 6.

To ensure that paired clubs from the same country play on separate days, the four groups were distinguished by colour: Groups A and B were red and Groups C and D were blue. When a paired club was drawn, for example, in one of the red groups (A or B), the other paired club – once it had been drawn – were automatically assigned to one of the two blue groups (C or D). The red groups and the blue groups necessarily play in two different match sequences.

The draw started with Pot 1 and the four teams drawn were allocated to the four groups in alphabetical order from Group A to Group D

Continuing with Pot 2, a ball was drawn at random. It was opened to display the name of the team drawn and the computer then indicated which groups were available for this club. A bowl was then prepared containing balls representing each of the groups into which the club could be drawn. One ball was drawn from this bowl to determine which of the available groups the team will play in. Please note that the options available to a team depended not only on the team’s own attributes and those of the teams already drawn, but also on the attributes of the other teams still to be drawn. This was enabled by computer calculations, which were needed to anticipate all possible scenarios and prevent any deadlock situations.

Once all the teams in Pot 2 were drawn, the procedure was repeated for the teams in Pots 3 and 4, in that order. Teams from Pot 1 were provisionally placed in the first position in their groups; teams from Pot 2 provisionally take the second position in their groups, and so on.

Once the draw procedure was completed, the computer assigned the final positions of the teams in each group.

The top two teams from each group will progress to the quarter-finals.