Cardiff City will find out their opponents for the first qualifying round of the 2024/25 UEFA Women’s Champions League on Tuesday 24 June (11am BST).
The Bluebirds are once again Wales’ representative in Europe’s elite club competition following their third successive Genero Adran Premier win.
The first qualifying round of the UEFA Women’s Champions League follows the format of a mini-tournament where clubs are drawn into groups of three or four based on seeding, which is decided by UEFA club coefficient.
Clubs compete in a semi-final and then either the final or third-place play-off, with only the winner of the final progressing to the second qualifying round. All games are played at one venue in the home country of one of the clubs in the group.
Cardiff City will be seeded in the draw, meaning that they will face one of the following unseeded clubs in the semi-final: AEK Athens (Greece), Athlone Town (Republic of Ireland), Swieqi United (Malta), Riga FC (Latvia), Buducnost Podgorica (Montenegro), Cliftonville (Northern Ireland), Pyunik (Armenia), Neftchi Baku (Azerbaijan), NSI Runavik (Faroe Islands).
The semi-finals will be played on Wednesday 30 July, before the finals and third-place play-offs on Saturday 2 August.
The second qualifying round (27-30 August) will also take the form of a one-venue mini-tournament, with the draw for this also taking place on Tuesday 24 June. Each mini-tournament winner will progress to the third qualifying round, while the second and third-place teams drop into the newly-introduced UEFA Women’s Europa Cup.
Cardiff City remain without a win from their previous three European campaigns. Last summer they headed to the Netherlands where they were beaten by FC Twente in the semi-finals before defeat to Ljuboten in the third-place play-off.
“We’re all excited to discover our opponents for this year’s campaign,” boss Iain Darbyshire told the club’s website. “As a squad, we have a strong core and we feel well equipped to see progress this year.
“Our previous two seasons in the competition have been a great experience and a learning curve that we want to build on. In pre-season, we’ll be working hard and we’ll all be focused on preparing to compete.”
