The draw for round three of the Carabao Cup will take place live on Sky Sports on the evening of Wednesday 27 August.
It will take place following the conclusion of the televised Grimsby Town v Manchester United tie at Blundell Park.
Following the expansion of the European competition calendar ahead of the 2024/25 season, the EFL will again be required to implement additional conditions for the draw.
Round three fixtures will take place across two weeks (beginning 15 and 22 September), with fixtures in the Champions League (week beginning 15 September) and Europa League (week beginning 22 September) also scheduled during this period.
As UEFA competition fixtures cannot be rescheduled, and to enable the Carabao Cup to proceed within its agreed schedule without disrupting other League or domestic cup fixtures, the additional conditions will ensure that clubs participating in the Champions League or Europa League cannot meet each other and ensure that both teams drawn in each tie will be able to fulfil the fixture in one of the allocated weeks.
Draw mechanics
The draw consists of 32 clubs – 23 winners from Round Two along with the nine Premier League clubs competing in UEFA competitions. The UEFA Conference League, a competition Crystal Palace FC will be participating in should they qualify, is due to begin in October and therefore has no scheduling impact on the draw.
For the main draw, two separate bowls will be utilised – one consisting of the eight UCL and UEL Clubs, and one consisting of the remaining 24 Clubs.
As the balls will be split across two pots, a pre-draw will be required first to determine whether each of the eight UCL/UEL teams will be playing home or away. This will be drawn live on Sky Sports during the build-up to Grimsby Town’s tie against Manchester United.
For the main draw, the first eight-ties will be drawn by alternating between one Club from Bowl 1 and one Club from Bowl 2, with the Home/Away positioning of the UCL/UEL team already pre-determined in the earlier draw.
Once the first eight ties featuring the UCL/UEL teams have been drawn, the remaining eight ties will then be drawn from Bowl 2 only.
From this round of the competition, the draw is no longer regionalised into northern and southern sections.