Real Madrid meet Liverpool and Dortmund for a Champions League final in a new format

real Madrid will have revenge of the finals of its last three meetings Champions League title wins, against Liverpool And Borussia Dortmundin its eight-match schedule of the new format of the flagship event of European football.

Madrid sign French superstar Kylian Mbappé Real Madrid also beat Liverpool in the final in 2022 and 2018, making it a record 15 European titles. Real Madrid will host Dortmund and travel to Liverpool, but the dates of the matches will not be confirmed until Saturday.

Manchester City also gets a Champions League final – hosting Inter Milan which she beat to win her European title in 2023.

Bayern Munich will host Paris Saint-Germain in a rematch of the 2020 final which the German giants won 1-0.

Defending champions Real will also face the seven-time European champions AC Milan, Salzburg and Stuttgart with trips to Atalanta – the Europa League winners who Madrid beat in the UEFA Super Cup this month – and twice in France, to play against Lille and for his debut Brest.

A complex draw ceremony in Monaco yielded eight teams of opponents for all 36 teams in the bigger and more lucrative Champions League.

The traditional 32-team group stage, played every season since 2003, has been scrapped in favour of a single-ranked league. Now, 36 teams will each play eight matches against eight different opponents until January.

The top eight teams in the January rankings advance directly to the round of 16 in March. The teams ranked ninth to twenty-fourth advance to the playoffs in February. The last 12 teams are eliminated.

Man City's away games at PSG and Juventus were balanced by one of the easiest home games: against Club Bruges, Feyenoord And Sparta of PragueThe English champion must also travel to Slovakian Bratislava.

Bayern will also host Barcelonawhom he beat 8-2 in the quarter-finals of the 2020 title, and will travel to Aston Villasurprise winner of the 1982 European Cup final.

Liverpool to host Bayer Leverkusenthe German champion, coached by his former star midfielder Xabi Alonso, in a landmark match of the extended championship phase.

Leverkusen to host city rivals Inter Milan and AC Milanand also travel to Atletico Madrid.

The groundbreaking draw was held at a gala ceremony in a beachside concert hall in Monaco featuring football's biggest names Cristiano Ronaldo and Gianluigi Buffon.

After each team's ball was selected by Buffon from one of four bowls – ranked according to results from the last five years of European club competitions – Ronaldo theatrically pressed a button to reveal how a software program allocated two opponents from each of the four seeding pots.

The new format was created by UEFA under pressure from influential clubs who wanted more guaranteed matches and a greater variety of top-level opponents.

The new phase of the league will have 144 games in total compared to 96 in the group stage last season. With the addition of a new knockout play-off round in February, the competition as a whole has 189 games instead of 125.

The 36 teams will share a UEFA prize money of at least 2.5 billion euros ($2.8 billion), a 25% increase from last season.