Europa League draw live: Aston Villa, Celtic and Rangers to learn 2025/26 opponents before Conference League draw

After yesterday’s exciting and successful Champions League draw, today sees the two other European competitions have their moment.

The Europa League draw takes place first and will start at 12pm with the Conference League draw to follow shortly afterwards.

For the English teams, Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest take part in the Europa League while Crystal Palace will play in the Conference League.

All three will have their sights set on winning their respective competitions.

Here’s a look at which teams start in which pot. Those in bold are the British sides:

Pot 1: Roma, Porto, Rangers, Feyenoord, Lille, GNK Dinamo, Real Betis, Salzburg, Aston Villa

Pot 2: Fenerbahce, Braga, Red Star Belgrade, Lyon, PAOK, Viktoria Plzen, Ferencvaros, Celtic, Maccabi Tel-Aviv

Pot 3: Young Boys, Basel, Midtjylland, Freiburg, Ludogorets, Nottingham Forest, Sturm Graz, FCSB, Nice

Pot 4: Bologna, Celta Vigo, Stuttgart, Panathinaikos, Malmo, Go Ahead Eagles, Utrecht, Genk, Brann

Okay, we’re about 20 minutes or so away from the draw for the Europa League league phase.

Here’s a reminder on how it’s going to work:

The league phase has 36 teams with every team handed eight games. The 36 teams are split into four pots of eight teams based on their Uefa coefficient ranking, with each team drawn out individually. They then have eight opponents selected via Uefa’s automated software, which uses specific fixture-selection criteria (for example, keeping sides from the same country apart).

The opponents then come from each pot, with two teams selected from each, one home and one away.

Teams cannot play another team from the same country and are not permitted to face more than two teams from one country.

Those finishing inside the top eight go straight into the last 16, then the next 16 teams advance to the play-off stage, with eight of those 16 teams progressing to the last 16.

Dango Ouattara celebrated his record £42.5m Brentford move with the winning goal as Keith Andrews earned his first victory as manager against Aston Villa at the Gtech Community Stadium.

Following an alarming collapse in their Premier League opener away to Nottingham Forest a week ago, the hosts hinted at life after Thomas Frank with a guileful display every bit as gritty and intelligent as those that were a hallmark under their former boss, grinding out a fine 1-0 win against a Villa side that ran out of ideas long before full-time.

Oliver Glasner hailed Crystal Palace’s “huge achievement” of eliminating the “noise” of their Europa League demotion to secure the club’s debut appearance in a group stage of a major European competition.

“It is a huge achievement to go into the group stage,” Glasner told Channel 5. “It was our second goal of the season and we have achieved that by the end of August which is great.

“The first one was winning the Community Shield – which we did – and now, with all of the noise of being demoted to the Conference League, we have done that too.

“We defended excellently and did not give them a chance but on the other side, we know we can and have to play better in possession, but overall it’s important be in the group stage.”

Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers told Celtic’s website: “I am delighted to welcome Michel-Ange to Celtic and I believe he will be a great addition to our squad.

“He is a really talented, exciting player and with a good level of experience at a high level already, so he will be an important player for us moving forward.

“He loves to attack and can play both sides of the pitch so we are sure he will give the team some great options.

“Having spoken to Michel-Ange I know he is very excited about joining Celtic and he wants to be a big success with us, so we look forward to working with him.”

Celtic have announced the signing of Michel-Ange Balikwisha from Royal Antwerp on a five-year deal.

The Belgian winger joins the Hoops just a couple of days after they missed out on the Champions League following a play-off shootout defeat to Kazakhstan outfit Kairat Almaty.

Being demoted to the Europa League has been widely blamed on Celtic’s failure to reinforce their attacking options, with Brendan Rodgers’ side unable to score in 210 minutes against Kairat.

Omari Hutchinson admitted Nottingham Forest was the “perfect place to be” after he signed a five-year deal with the club.

He told Forest TV: “It’s been a long and difficult few weeks. I’m really excited to be here and just can’t wait to get started.

“I know a lot of players here. They told me how good it is and how well I’ll progress as a player. It’s just the perfect place to be.

“I was just doing pre-season with my brother. I get a message from him (Anderson) and he’s telling me to come and I said, ‘Listen, I’ll try my best’, but yeah, he convinced me to come.”

“Absolute nonsense. Absurd. This narrative, it’s absurd,” retorted Nuno, when asked about the reports.

Yet when pressed as to whether he was confident he would still be Forest’s manager when the transfer window shuts on September 1, he replied: “I cannot answer that question, but what I know is that I am working and trying to do my job the best I can.

“Of course, the situation has to be solved and we are responsible people. We can have a good conversation to create a good platform for what is more important, the team.

“We’re going to have it. We must. We need to have this conversation and we will have it. This is what I think is more important than anything.”