Who Got the Toughest Champions League Draw? All 36 Teams Ranked

The 2026/27 Champions League league-phase fixtures are in. All 36 clubs have their eight opponents, and, well, some will fancy their chances a lot more than others. But who really got the worst of it, and where did the breaks fall?

To see what the numbers say, I used Club Elo ratings from the day of the draw and ranked every schedule from toughest to most forgiving, then put my findings up against a separate fixture-difficulty analysis. 

2026/2027 Champions League league-phase matchups are out

Last Thursday, August 27, UEFA held the 36-team league-phase draw in Monaco. PSG drew Barcelona at home, and the sports-tourism effect was almost immediate: within two days, a 21-year-old fan in the UK was on Reddit planning his first solo trip abroad around the match. The holders also have a trip to Manchester City, while Real Madrid welcome Inter before an away date with Arsenal. England and Spain, meanwhile, lead the way for representation, each sending five clubs into the competition.

How the Champions League draw works

Before 2024, the Champions League used four-team groups, with each club facing the other three at home and away. Now all 36 sides make one league table. For the draw, UEFA places them into four pots, largely by coefficient, then gives each club eight opponents under the following rules:

• Two opponents come from each pot, one home and one away.
• Every club gets four home fixtures and four on the road.
• Teams from the same country cannot face each other.
• No side can meet more than two clubs from any other nation.
• A new 2026/27 restriction stops a club from hosting a particular opponent for a third straight season. 

The draw itself is part manual, part computerized, meaning that clubs come out of the pots by hand, while software assigns the opponents and venues.

After the league phase, the top eight advance straight to the round of 16. Ninth through 24th enter a two-legged playoff for the remaining places. Anyone below that is out of Europe (no more Europa League fallback under this format).

Who got the toughest Champions League draw?

The new Champions League format packs 144 games into eight matchdays from September 8 to January 27. On paper, every club starts on equal terms, all fighting for the same places in a single league table. The level of opposition they meet along the way, though, can look very different. 

Opta Analyst used its Power Rankings to measure that spread and found Stuttgart with the easiest schedule, while first-time qualifier Sabah FK got anything but beginner’s luck, drawing the toughest. Among the English sides, Liverpool and Manchester City landed at opposite ends of the scale. 

To test the same question another way, I matched all 36 clubs’ opponent lists against their Club Elo ratings on the day of the draw.

Club Elo ratings explained

Club Elo ratings are a continuously updated measure of a soccer club’s strength, expressed as a single number where higher means better. For comparing clubs across different domestic leagues, I like it as a simpler alternative to Opta’s Power Rankings, while unlike UEFA coefficients, it also reflects results outside European competitions.

After every match, teams gain or lose Elo points based on the result and the quality of the opposition, so beating a heavyweight counts for more than seeing off a weaker side. The model also factors in goal margin and home advantage.

Ranking all 36 schedules, from hardest to easiest based on Club Elo

The table below ranks all 36 clubs in the 2026/27 Champions League by the average Elo of their league-phase opposition, shown in column four. To the right, that same measure is split between home games and away trips.

Note: Elo Ratings are rounded to the nearest whole point.

Sabah draw the short straw, City not far behind

My Club Elo method has Sabah up against the toughest field, matching Opta’s conclusion, with an average opponent rating of 1,840. For one of the competition’s bigger outsiders on paper, that is about as rough a draw as it gets, which helps explain why several top soccer betting sites price them as favorites to finish bottom. 

Then, up next, Manchester City come in second at 1,838, thanks largely to Pot 1 dates against European soccer heavyweights Barcelona and PSG, plus Napoli from Pot 3. Opta, by contrast, slots five clubs between City and Sabah, including Lens, Slavia Prague, Atlético Madrid and Club Brugge. To be fair, most still rank near the tougher end in my numbers, although the Spaniards drop to 11th. 

Looking at the home-and-away split, Slavia Prague come out worst at home, while Bodø/Glimt face the sternest set of road fixtures.

Stuttgart and Inter caught the softer end

As per Club Elo, the two most forgiving schedules belong to Inter and Stuttgart. The latter’s opposition score averages 1,764, some 76 points below Sabah’s 1,840. To put that into perspective, a team rated 76 points higher would have roughly a 61–39% expected-result advantage on neutral ground. It’s also about four-fifths of Club Elo’s estimated Champions League home advantage.

This is by no means saying their path is a lock, to borrow one of sports betting’s more overworked phrases. But even working from a completely different calculation, Stuttgart and Inter at the bottom match Opta Analyst’s findings exactly. Opta then ranks Real Madrid third-easiest, whereas my numbers point to LASK Linz.

So some roads really are tougher than others

Ultimately, whichever model you use, the fixtures have clearly treated some clubs more kindly than others. Sabah face the toughest assignment by both measures, even before factoring in their underdog status, while Stuttgart come away with the kindest schedule of the lot.

None of that decides who reaches the knockouts, of course. Opta’s 2025/26 review rated Bayern’s schedule the hardest, yet they still finished second in the league table. Even so, the point stands this time around — all 36 clubs went through one draw process, but the fixture list has hardly given everyone an even hand in the race for places.