**Liverpool, Real Madrid, Inter Milan and Arsenal are among the 36 teams that will feature in Thursday's league phase draw for the 2026-27 Champions League.**
The quartet of clubs, who are all multi-time Champions League finalists, will all feature in pot one of the draw. It effectively means they are all in Uefa's nine best-rated clubs that are featuring in the league phase of this season's competition.
However, a new rule introduced by Uefa for this season will limit a fixture possibility that affects all four clubs.
The league phase was introduced at the start of the 2024-25, and sees each team play eight times. Those matches consist of eight different opponents, with two coming from each of the four pots. Each team plays a home and away match against a team from each pot.
But starting from this year, a team is not permitted to host a side that they have previously played a league phase home match against in each of the previous two seasons.
Only two potential fixtures meet that criteria ahead of Thursday's draw. They are Liverpool vs Real Madrid and Inter Milan vs Arsenal.
In the 2024-25 and 2025-26 seasons, Liverpool faced Real Madrid at Anfield. The Reds won both of those matches 2-0 and 1-0 respectively.
Over the same two seasons, Inter have hosted the Gunners. Inter were 1-0 winners two seasons ago, but lost 3-1 last term on Arsenal's way to reaching their first Champions League final in 20 years.