Thirty-six clubs will have their European routes mapped inside a glass-and-steel convention center on the Mediterranean. The 2026/27 Champions League league-phase draw begins at noon ET, 6 p.m. in Monaco, on Thursday, August 27, at the Grimaldi Forum, a venue in Larvotto rather than UEFA headquarters in Nyon. Stadio has already explained why the Champions League draw has no “safe” pot, but the place and the people around the draw reveal a different side of the event. UEFA will stream the ceremony free through its official platforms.
Built on the seafront beside the Japanese Garden, the Forum sits at 10 Avenue Princesse Grace on the eastern side of the principality. It opened in 2000 and now contains four auditoriums, including the 1,864-seat Salle des Princes, although UEFA hasn’t announced the exact room for Thursday’s ceremony. Its glass façade and Mediterranean setting give the broadcast the visual polish often collapsed into the shorthand of “Monte Carlo.” The precise location is the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco’s Larvotto district.
The audience is broader and more powerful than the televised sequence of club crests suggests. The 2024 UEFA season launch at the Forum drew more than 700 guests, including representatives of European clubs, football officials, former players and media. Those delegations can reach the highest level of a club’s hierarchy. When AS Monaco attended that year’s draw, the club listed president Dmitry Rybolovlev, vice presidents Ekaterina Sartori Rybolovleva and Juan Sartori, general manager Thiago Scuro and coach Adi Hütter among those present.
UEFA hasn’t published a person-by-person guest list for 2026. The usual mix includes presidents and owners, chief executives, sporting directors, some coaches, UEFA competition staff, broadcasters and journalists. They aren’t there only to learn eight opponents. The draw compresses fixture coordination, media obligations and football diplomacy into a single evening.
Monaco’s football ritual has a wider cast
The ceremony has also become a stage for the game’s memory. UEFA honored Cristiano Ronaldo and Gianluigi Buffon during the 2024 draw, then presented Zlatan Ibrahimović with the President’s Award in 2025. A former player may again assist with the draw or receive an award, but UEFA hasn’t announced a 2026 honoree. A late legend reveal remains possible, but no individual appearance should be assumed.
That mix of power and memory will sit beside some of the competition’s newest identities. Sabah and LASK have reached the Champions League league phase for the first time, while Como will enter its first campaign at this level. Their representatives will occupy the same ceremony as Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Barcelona and defending champion Paris Saint-Germain. For Como, whose wider cultural strategy stretches into tourism, fashion and media, Monaco feels like an unusually fitting point of entry.
The modern draw adds an odd technological tension to all that ceremony. UEFA’s 2026/27 regulations divide the 36 clubs into four pots of nine and permit a digital draw. Every team receives two opponents from each pot, one at home and one away, while association rules and scheduling constraints must be respected. UEFA won’t publish the final seedings, any groupings or the exact procedure until Thursday morning.
The venue’s other attraction sharpens the Monaco aesthetic without relying on generic talk of glamour. In another part of the building, “Monaco and the Automobile, from 1893 to the Present Day” fills 3,500 square meters with more than 50 vehicles connected to the principality. The exhibition remains open until 10 p.m. on Thursday. Draw guests will enter a complex simultaneously staging European football’s future and Monaco’s automotive past.
UEFA has used Monaco as a symbolic starting point for its club season since 1998, although the tradition hasn’t been uninterrupted. The event is part draw, part awards show and part industry gathering. By Saturday, the names revealed inside the Forum will have been organized into a fixture list with dates and kickoff times. The ceremony will have done its work, turning 36 badges, a room full of decision-makers and a screen of calculations into the road toward the 2027 final in Madrid.
