Champions 26/27 kicks off: all 18 matchday 1 fixtures live, 36 teams and why there are no more groups

🏟️ And where it all leads: the final is Saturday, June 5th, 2027 at the Metropolitano. Yep: in Madrid, at Atlético's place. That'd be the sixth final in the city and the second at that stadium since 2019. Atleti reaching a final played at their own ground is one of those things that only happens in football… or never happens. We'll see.

📊 The league phase standings

This is the table that matters. All 36, ranked, with the knockout zone, the playoff zone and the "sayonara" zone separated by colours. This updates itself too.

The full table, matchday by matchday with the entire fixture list, is always over at the Champions 26/27 page, updating itself all season.

🇪🇸 The five Spanish clubs

Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atlético and Villarreal got in via the league (1st to 4th… well, Madrid finished 2nd and Barça were champions), and Betis through the European performance spot: Spain finished second in the coefficient rankings last season, behind England, which earned them an extra ticket for the fifth-place finisher. Same way Liverpool got in as fifth in the Premier.

Betis return after 21 years

This is the lovely story of the day. The last time Betis played Champions was the 2005/06 group stage, under Serra Ferrer, in a group with Chelsea, Liverpool and Anderlecht. That Betis side beat Chelsea 1-0 at the Villamarín and drew 0-0 with Liverpool. Their last match in the competition was December 6th, 2005. In between: two relegations to Segunda and a complete club rebuild. Twenty-one years later they're back, with Pellegrini, and on the back of beating Real Madrid. Today they visit Lille.

Villarreal, out for redemption

Because last year was brutal: 1 point from 24 possible, zero wins in eight matches. No other team among the 36 arrives with such a grim record. New manager—Íñigo Pérez, fresh from taking Rayo to a Conference final—and starting over. The opener? Signal Iduna Park in Dortmund, the same lot that hammered them 4-0 last season. Couldn't ask for a tougher start if you tried.

🔥 The headline act: Real Madrid - Inter at the Bernabéu

If you watch one, this is it. And not just because of the teams' quality, but because of everything wrapped up in it:

• Mourinho's in the Real Madrid dugout and the first European rival the draw gives him is Inter. He won the Champions with that Inter…and he won it precisely at the Bernabéu. Life, innit.
• Across the way, Cristian Chivu managing Inter, the man who lifted it as a player that night in 2010. Two men from Inter's treble, head-to-head, in the same stadium.
• Madrid are rattled: first loss of the season on Friday, 1-0 to Betis at La Cartuja, with Mbappé missing a penalty thrown in.
• And a stat that'll make your head spin: Inter haven't won at the Bernabéu since 1967. Seven visits, seven defeats.
• Vinícius is one assist away from cracking the top four all-time assist-makers in Champions history.

Madrid arrive with the medical room full (Rodrygo, Militão, Mendy, Endrick, Asencio) and Arda Güler, Camavinga and Bernardo Silva suspended. Inter are without Dimarco.

👀 The other matches I'm not missing

Liverpool - Atlético (Wednesday, Anfield). Exact replay of the opener last season, when Atleti lost 3-2 after equalising late and getting caught at the death. And here's the spicy bit: Andoni Iraola manages Liverpool and debuts in the Champions as a boss. Marcos Llorente's got 4 goals in two trips to Anfield: it's basically his second home. Julián Álvarez enters the fray after a busy summer.

Porto - Manchester City (today). City's first European match without Guardiola, who left last June after a decade and twenty titles. At the helm now: Enzo Maresca, his former assistant. Facing them, Porto as league leaders with a perfect record in Portugal.

Napoli - Arsenal (Wednesday). The defending runners-up and Premier League champions visit a Napoli side nursing the cruelest wound of the weekend: up 0-2 at San Siro and lost 3-2 in stoppage time.

Barcelona - Feyenoord (Wednesday, Camp Nou). Flick's got the best numbers in the competition's history among managers with 10+ matches: 72.7% win rate and 2.88 goals per game. De Jong's out through suspension, Eric García banned. Feyenoord arrive unbeaten in fourteen.

🌍 The four debutants (and the club that was born nine years ago)

Sabah FK, from Azerbaijan, was founded on 8 September 2017. That is: today, the day the Champions League starts, it's been exactly nine years and one day since they existed. They won their first Azerbaijani league title, completed the double breaking Qarabağ's dominance and got here by overcoming four preliminary rounds, the last one with a 5-2 win after extra time against Hapoel Beer-Sheva. They're the first club from their country to reach the league phase. They've drawn Barcelona, Arsenal, Manchester United, Dortmund, Napoli, Villarreal, Slavia and Viking. Enjoy it, for fuck's sake.

Como 1907 also make their debut, and it's the first time the club has played European football in their entire history: they finished fourth in Serie A with 71 points, ahead of Milan and Juventus, with Cesc Fàbregas on the bench. One for us: Como is the club where Morata played last season… and he's missing it because he's on loan at Leganés, in the Second Division. The Champions League from Butarque.

Viking FK (Norway) and LASK (Austria) complete the debutants. What LASK did deserves special mention: they lost 3-0 away at Celtic in Glasgow and won 5-1 after extra time at home. Celtic out, them through.

🧐 Opening day facts and curiosities

• The champions are PSG, who retained the title in May by beating Arsenal on penalties in the Budapest final. They're the second club in the Champions era to win back-to-back titles, after Madrid.
• Norway has two teams in the league phase for the first time since 1999-2000 (Bodø/Glimt and Viking). Bodø, the northernmost club ever to play this competition, knocked out Inter last year.
• Turkey repeats the double (Fenerbahçe and Galatasaray) for the first time since 2007-08. And there are three cities with two representatives: Madrid, Manchester and Istanbul.
• Rule changes: now you need four yellows for a ban (previously three), VAR can intervene on second yellows that are clearly harsh, and the scoreboard clock keeps running during added time.
• The "debut patch": players making their Champions League debut will wear a special patch on their sleeve which is later removed, authenticated and turned into a signed collectible card. Very on-brand for our times.
• The money: just for being in the league phase, each club takes home 18.62 million. Each win is an extra 2.1 million; each draw, 700,000. Winning the whole thing could exceed 60 million.
• Manchester United return to the Champions League three seasons later, and their opener at Old Trafford is… against Sabah.

📅 What's coming

The league phase runs until January: MD2 on 13-14 October, MD3 on 20-21, MD4 on 3-4 November, MD5 on 24-25, MD6 on 8-9 December, MD7 on 19-20 January and MD8 on 27 January, the last one with everything at the same time. Play-offs in February, last 16 in March, quarter-finals in April, semi-finals between April and May, and the final on 5 June at the Metropolitano.

I'll be following the whole season on the Champions 26/27 page: live standings, fixtures for each matchday and the complete calendar. And down here, as always, you tell me who you're backing and what you expect from this edition. See you in the live chat, lads. ⭐

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