Women's Champions League group stage draw

The UEFA Women's Champions League draw was made on Friday 20 October.

Holders Barcelona and fellow direct entrants Lyon, Bayern München and Chelsea were joined in the draw by the 12 round 2 winners. Group fixtures will run between 14 November and 31 January.

How the UEFA Women's Champions League group stage draw worked

Draw conditions:

• Clubs from the same country could not be drawn in the same group.
• In the case of associations with two representatives, for TV coverage reasons these clubs were be paired in order to split their matches between the Tuesday and Wednesday or the Wednesday and Thursday of each matchweek. In the case of associations with three representatives, only two clubs were paired. These pairings were based on projected TV audiences.
• Each club plays one home and one away match against each other club in its group. A club does not play more than two home or two away matches in a row and each club plays one home match and one away match on the first and last two matchdays. Clubs should play all other clubs in their group once before Matchday 4.

Draw explanation:

The 16 clubs involved were seeded into four draw pots of four teams.

The first pot comprised the titleholder (top seed) and the domestic champions of the three top-ranked associations in the access list. As the titleholder (Barcelona) is the domestic champion of one of the top three associations, the first pot was completed with the champion of the association ranked fourth in the access list (England).

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

Pot 1 (direct entrants)
FC Barcelona (ESP, holders) coefficient 126.233
Olympique Lyonnais (FRA) 118.166
FC Bayern München (GER) 96.333
Chelsea FC Women (ENG) 81.366

Pot 2 
Paris Saint-Germain (FRA) 97.166
SK Slavia Praha (CZE) 39.233
Real Madrid CF (ESP) 37.233
FC Rosengård (SWE) 33.399

Pot 3
SKN St. Pölten Frauen (AUT) 30.050
SL Benfica (POR) 22.800
BK Häcken FF (SWE) 22.399
AS Roma (ITA) 21.000

Pot 4
AFC Ajax (NED) 18.400
Paris FC (FRA) 18.166
Eintracht Frankfurt (GER) 17.333
SK Brann (NOR) 7.100

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

Pairings:
A: Barcelona & Real Madrid
B: Lyon & Paris Saint-Germain
C: Bayern & Frankfurt
D: Rosengård & Häcken

Draw procedure:

Pot 1

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

Pots 2 to 4

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 are 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 took 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 draw result and full fixture list (matchdays 1 to 6) will be provided to teams after the draw on Friday evening and will be under embargo until Saturday morning 11:00 CET at which time it will be released.

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

Meet the contenders

• Holders Barcelona are joined by fellow former champions Lyon and Frankfurt, though both Wolfsburg (last season's runners-up) and Arsenal miss out after losing to Paris FC.
• Chelsea and Paris Saint-Germain are former runners-up, while Bayern, Paris FC and Rosengård are past semi-finalists. Häcken, Real Madrid, Roma and Slavia have made the last eight.
• Barcelona, Bayern, Benfica, Chelsea, Lyon, Paris Saint-Germain and Real Madrid have reached the group stage in all three seasons since the round was introduced in 2021/22. Roma, Rosengård, St. Pölten and Slavia made it last season, as did Häcken the year before. Ajax, Brann, Frankfurt and Paris FC are in the current group stage for the first time.
• Ajax and Brann are the first teams from the Netherlands and Norway respectively to make the group stage. Brann are the only club who have never previously been among the last 16 in any format.
• France is the second nation to have three teams in a group stage after Germany (Wolfsburg, Bayern and Hoffenheim) in 2021/22. Paris is the second city to have two teams in a group stage after London (Arsenal and Chelsea) in 2021/22 and 2022/23.

UEFA Women's Champions League season calendar

Group stage
Matchday 1: 14/15 November
Matchday 2: 22/23 November
Matchday 3: 13/14 December
Matchday 4: 20/21 December
Matchday 5: 24/25 January
Matchday 6: 30/31 January

Quarter-final & semi-final draw
6 February, Nyon

Quarter-finals
First leg: 19/20 March
Second leg: 27/28 March

Semi-finals
First leg: 20/21 April
Second leg: 27/28 April

Final (San Mamés Stadium, Bilbao)
25 May