Chelsea will face trips to German Bundesliga side Heidenheim and to Athens to play Panathinaikos in the league phase of this season's UEFA Conference League, the draw for which took place on Friday in Monaco.
The Stamford Bridge side are playing in the Conference League for the first time in their history after finishing sixth in last season's Premier League.
They will play home games against Gent of Belgium, Shamrock Rovers of Ireland and FC Noah of Armenia, who came through four qualifying ties to reach the league stage.
Enzo Maresca's Chelsea will go to Heidenheim, who qualified after finishing eighth last season in their first ever German Bundesliga campaign.
Chelsea will also visit former European Cup runners-up Panathinaikos and Astana of Kazakhstan.
The London side, who scraped past Servette of Switzerland in the play-offs, will be hoping to add the Conference League to a trophy cabinet which already contains two Champions Leagues, two Europa Leagues, two Cup Winners' Cups and two UEFA Super Cups.
UEFA Conference League: A New Era
The group stage has been replaced by a league phase in which all 36 clubs are pooled together.
Participants are then split into six seeded pots, with every team facing one club from each pot for a total of six matches -- rather than the eight games per club in the Champions League and Europa League.
Familiar Foes and New Challengers
Runners-up in each of the last two years, including to Olympiakos in last season's final, Fiorentina of Italy are once again involved.
Their opponents include The New Saints, who are the first club from the Welsh league system to feature at this stage of a European competition.
Real Betis will be the Spanish representative, while no French team features in the league phase after Lens lost to Panathinaikos in the play-offs.
Hearts of Scotland will notably take on FC Copenhagen and Cercle Brugge away, and Heidenheim at home.
Larne, the first club from the Northern Irish league to reach this stage of a European competition, will host Shamrock Rovers from across the border. The latter will also take on The New Saints.
UEFA will reveal specific fixture dates on Saturday, but the first matches will take place on October 3 and the final matchday is scheduled for December 19.
A Race To The Final
This season's Conference League final will be held in Wroclaw, Poland on May 28, next year.
The top eight in the standings in December go direct to the round of 16 in March. Teams ranked ninth to 24th go into the knockout playoffs in February. The bottom 12 teams are eliminated.
A Financial Boost for Clubs
The tournament prize money fund is 285 million euros ($315 million) . Each team is paid a starting fee of 3.17 million euros ($3.5 million) with bonus payments for wins and draws in the league phase and for advancing through each knockout round.
We will play one team from all six pots, once each, either home or away. The top eight of the total 36 sides then progress directly to the last 16, and a further 16 sides face off in the play-offs to join them.
A European Double for Chelsea?
Qualifying for the Conference League — by finishing sixth in the Premier League last season — also obliges big-spending Chelsea to have its accounts analyzed again by UEFA. A UEFA-appointed expert panel studies the spending and revenue of hundreds of teams in European competition for compliance with its financial rules.
A New Era for European Football
Each Conference League team will play six games against six different opponents through Dec. 19. There are eight games for teams in the Champions League and Europa League.
Teams were ranked in six seeding pots based on their recent record in European competitions and the draw software allocated one opponent from each.
Northern Ireland and Wales have teams playing in the group stage of a European competition for the first time.
Larne will have an Irish derby at home against Shamrock Rovers, and The New Saints’ games include away to Fiorentina, the 2023 beaten finalist.
The Road to Wroclaw
The final is played May 28 in Wroclaw, Poland.
