Leicester City: Premier League winners await first ever Champions League draw

Leicester City won the top flight title for the first time in their history last season

Leicester City will find out who their first ever Champions League opponents will be when the draw for the group stage takes place on Thursday.

Claudio Ranieri's side are one of eight seeded teams in the draw, which is scheduled to take place at 17:00 BST.

Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Paris St-Germain and Juventus are also seeded and will not face Leicester.

Arsenal, Tottenham, Manchester City cannot be drawn with Leicester but Scottish champions Celtic could be.

Celtic qualified for the group stage by beating Israel's Hapoel Beer Sheva 5-4 on aggregate.

The other seeded sides are Portuguese league winners Benfica and Russian champions CSKA Moscow.

Leicester produced one of the great sporting shocks to win last season's Premier League title and qualify for the Champions League for the first time.

The Foxes' last involvement in European football saw them knocked out in the first round of the Uefa Cup by Red Star Belgrade in 2000.

They could potentially be drawn in a group with last season's beaten finalists Atletico Madrid of Spain, Dutch champions PSV Eindhoven and Turkish league winners Besiktas.

Manchester City, who lost to champions Real Madrid in the semi-finals last season, qualified for the group stages thanks to a 6-0 aggregate win over Romania's Steaua Bucharest on Wednesday.

Real Madrid beat rivals Atletico Madrid 5-3 on penalties in last season's Champions League final after the match ended 1-1

The pots

Pot 1: Real Madrid (Spain), Barcelona (Spain), Leicester City (England), Bayern Munich (Germany), Juventus (Italy), Benfica (Portugal), Paris Saint-Germain (France), CSKA Moscow (Russia).

Pot 2: Atletico Madrid (Spain), Borussia Dortmund (Germany), Arsenal (England), Manchester City (England), Sevilla (Spain), Porto (Portugal), Napoli (Italy), Bayer Leverkusen (Germany)

Pot 3: Basel (Switzerland), Tottenham Hotspur (England), Dynamo Kiev (Ukraine), Lyon (France), PSV Eindhoven (Netherlands), Sporting Lisbon (Portugal), Club Brugge (Belgium), Borussia Monchengladbach (Germany)

Pot 4: Celtic (Scotland), Dinamo Zagreb (Croatia), Monaco (France), Besiktas (Turkey), Legia Warsaw (Poland), Ludogorets Razgrad (Bulgaria), FC Copenhagen (Denmark), Rostov (Russia)

Key dates

• 13-14 September - First round of group matches

• 6-7 December - Final round of group matches

• 14-15/21-22 February - Round of 16, first leg

• 07-08/14-15 March - Round of 16, second leg

• 11-12 April - Quarter-finals, first leg

• 18-19 April - Quarter-finals, second leg

• 02-03 May - Semi-finals, first leg

• 09-10 May - Semi-finals, second leg

• 03 June - Final (Principality Stadium, Cardiff)

Take part in our new Premier League Predictor game, which allows you to create leagues with friends.

Subscribe to the BBC Sport newsletter to get our pick of news, features and video sent to your inbox.