Wrexham will find out their opponents for the first qualifying round of the 2026/27 UEFA Women’s Champions League in the draw at 14:00 BST on Thursday 18 June .
The Red Dragons are Wales’ representative for the first time in Europe’s elite club competition after their historic first ever top-flight title, pipping Cardiff City to the post in the Genero Adran Premier.
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. Wrexham will be unseeded in the draw.
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.
Wrexham have been entered into Champions Path Group 2 and will face one of the following teams in the semi-final: Athlone Town, FC Pyunik, Glentoran, Czarni Sosnowiec, Spartak Myjava or Flora Tallinn.
The semi-finals will be played on Wednesday 22 July, before the finals and third-place play-offs on Saturday 25 July.
The second qualifying round (5-8 August) will also take the form of a one-venue mini-tournament, with the draw for this also taking place on Thursday 18 June. Each mini-tournament winner will progress to the third qualifying round, while the second and third-place teams drop into the UEFA Women’s Europa Cup.
Cardiff City have been the Genero Adran Premier’s representatives in the previous three European campaigns, but were unable to record a victory. Indeed, Wrexham will hope to become the first Welsh side to win a game in the UEFA Women’s Champions League since Cardiff Met in 2019.
“We’re not going in to make the numbers up,” Wrexham captain Jodie Bartle told the club’s official channels. “We want to go and make history again. We made history last season, more than once, and it’s a goal, it’s something that you pride yourself on, to make those pieces of history.
“We want to make our community, our town, anyone that’s got anything to do with Wrexham, proud. To go and score a couple of goals, to win a game, would be phenomenal.
“Because it’s at the start of the season, I think it will be a great thing for us to try to create momentum from the absolute get-go and then hopefully we can hit the ground running when the [league] season starts.”
