The leagues around Europe have now concluded in all the countries and Arsenal now officially know which teams will be their  opponents in the Champions League qualifying round 1

There will be 16 teams playing in the Women Champions League, League path round 1. Those are teams that qualified as runner-ups or third placed teams in their respective league.

The first round is played as a knock-out stage with semi-finals and finals guaranteeing two games for every team.

Teams are split between seeded and unseeded teams. Seeded teams will play an unseeded team in the semi-final while they could play a seeded or an unseeded team in the semi-final.

League path: Pot 1: seeded

Pot 2: unseeded

Most of the unseeded opponents would be beatable, but the finals could set Arsenal against Paris FC again, Frankfurt or Atletico. As we saw last season, it would be a difficult tie.

Should Arsenal make it through to the second round, there will be five seeded teams and five unseeded teams drawn for a home and away format.

Four teams will come from Round 1 while there will be six teams that have qualified directly through Round 2

Enter in round 2:

1 Paris Saint-Germain (FRA) 98.966

2 Wolfsburg (GER) 92.799

3 Real Madrid (ESP) 41.633

4 Manchester City (ENG) 40.999

5 Juventus (ITA) 40.800

6 Häcken (SWE) 34.999

Thanks to their 57.999 coefficients, Arsenal would be seeded in the Second Round making it easier, in theory, to make it to the Group Stage. Those Round 2 games would be played around the WSL matchday 1 and 2 and therefore would force the club to rotate the squad early in the season.

The draw will take place on 5 July in Nyon for round 1 and hopefully Arsenal will be able to host the mini-tournament as Borehamwood have indicated they would be happy to host in early September.

The full season schedule is as follows:

  • Season calendar Round 1 (one-venue mini-tournaments) Semi-finals: 4 September Finals/third-place play-offs: 7 September
  • Round 2 draw 9 September, Nyon
  • Round 2 First leg: 18/19 September Second leg: 25/26 September
  • Group stage draw 27 September, Nyon
  • Group stage Matchday 1: 8/9 October Matchday 2: 16/17 October Matchday 3: 12/13 November Matchday 4: 20/21 November Matchday 5: 11/12 December Matchday 6: 17/18 December
  • Quarter-final & semi-final draw 7 February, Nyon
  • Quarter-finals First leg: 18/19 March Second leg: 26/27 March
  • Semi-finals First leg: 19/20 April Second leg: 26/27 April
  • Final (Estádio José Alvalade, Lisbon) 23, 24 or 25 May tbc