When Hearts will find out play-off opponents: Europa League draw

The draw for the play-off round takes place on Monday, August 5 at the House of European Football in Nyon, Switzerland.

UEFA has yet to announce the time of the draw but it will likely be early afternoon. What we do know, however, is the organisation will release seedings, any groupings and the procedure at 08:30 CET (7.30am UK time) on the day of the draw.

Read more

• Hearts and the importance of third - Euro performance and Shankland factor

• Hearts in Europe: Finances, opponents, and why Conference League could be best

• Hearts in Europe lowdown: New format, prize money, possible opponents

There is a very good chance that Hearts won't know the identity of their opponents due to the draw taking place before the third qualifying round of the Europa League and Champions League has taken place.

Hearts, as well as Anderlecht, LASK, Besiktas and TSC, will be joined in the play-off round by the losers of the six Champions League third round qualifying ties in the Champions Path and the 13 winners of the Europa League third qualifying round. 

Steven Naismith's men will be unseeded due to the club's lowly coefficient. As of yet, the identity of possible opponents is vague. Two teams are confirmed as definite seeds, and that is Austrian outfit LASK and Belgian giants Anderlecht.

The 10 other seeds come from the:

Winner of Ajax v Panathinaikos

Winner of Braga v Servette

Winner of Maccabi Tel Aviv v Panevėžys

Winner of Molde v Cercle Brugge

Winner of Viktoria Plzeň v Kryvbas Kryvyi Rih 

Loser of Ludogorets Razgrad v Qarabağ

Winner of Partizan Belgrade v Lugano

Loser of Midtjylland v Ferencváros

Loser of Malmö v PAOK

Loser of APOEL v Slovan Bratislava

And we're done 🧵

Hearts will face one of these 22 teams when the draw is made on Monday. Some of these airports are, frankly, absolutely miles away from the city we'll be playing in but a route does exist.

For Athens, there seems to be a ferry from every major Greek island. pic.twitter.com/V3HvhVmTII

— Eck (@Eckauskas1874) August 2, 2024

As we can see there are some big names that Hearts could be drawn against, namely Braga, Ajax and Anderlecht. At the same time, there will be opponents who are most definitely in the 'beatable' category. 

The play-off round matches will take place on August 22 and August 29. 

If Hearts win they will go into the league phase of the Europa League where they will play eight matches. Lose the play-off and the team will drop into the league phase of the Conference League and will play six games.