When will the Carabao Cup third round draw take place? Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea enter the pot

The Carabao Cup will be in full swing after the Premier League's big names enter the fray in the third round next month. The seven top-flight teams that qualified for the Champions League, Europa League or Europa Conference League this season have been allowed to bypass the first two rounds.

Only 32 teams will be in the draw for the third round, consisting of the 25 teams that won their second-round clash and the seven qualified European teams.

A new draw system is in place this season, with teams divided into two groups. The first group will include Champions League and Europa League clubs Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool, Aston Villa, Tottenham and Manchester United.

Bowl 2 will feature all other clubs, including Chelsea, who have qualified for the Europa League. A preliminary draw will be made to determine the home or away positioning of the six Bowl 1 clubs for the first six matches of the third round schedule.

The main draw will then begin with those first six games, which will be selected by picking one team from Bowl 1 and one from Bowl 2. The remaining 10 games will be played by teams from Bowl 2 only.

And in another format change, the third round of the Carabao Cup will be played over two weeks (week of September 16 and week of September 23) due to the new busy European calendar.

When will the draw for the third round of the Carabao Cup take place?

The pre-draw, conducted solely to determine the home or away positioning of the six Bowl 1 teams when selected in the main draw, is expected to take place ahead of Nottingham Forest's clash with Newcastle United, which kicks off at 8pm (BST) on Wednesday 28 August.

The main draw will take place after this match, hosted by Mark Chapman, with an estimated start time of 22:15 (BST).

Viewers will be able to follow the Carabao Cup third round draw on Sky Sports Main Event or Sky Sports Football. It is also expected to be streamed free-to-air on the Sky Sports Football YouTube channel. The ball numbers for the draw will be announced on Wednesday morning.

There are several exciting second round clashes this week, including Crystal Palace v Norwich City, Wolves v Burnley, West Ham v Bournemouth and Forest v the Magpies.