There’s not long to wait until Warriors find out their opponents for the 2017/18 European Challenge Cup pool stages as the draw for next season’s competition takes place in Switzerland at 1pm on Thursday 8 June.
The draw will be streamed live at www.epcrugby.com and on official tournament Facebook channels.
If you can’t watch the draw, make sure you follow the Warriors twitter page, where we will be tweeting live updates of our pool draw.
How the draw works
For the purposes of creating the tiers, the clubs are ranked based on their finishing positions in the Top 14, Premiership, Guinness PRO12, PRO D2 and Greene King IPA Championship leagues, or on their qualification from the Continental Shield.
| Rank | Top 14 | Premiership | PRO12 |
| 1 | Stade Francais | Newcastle Falcons | Cardiff Blues |
| 2 | Brive | Gloucester Rugby | Connacht Rugby |
| 3 | Pau | Sale Sharks | Edinburgh Rugby |
| 4 | Lyon | Worcester Warriors | Newport Gwent Dragons |
| 5 | Bordeaux-Begles | London Irish | Zebre Rugby |
| 6 | Toulouse | ||
| 7 | Oyonnax | ||
| 8 | Agen |
Continental Shield
Enisei-STM
Krasny Yar
Key Principles
• The 20 clubs which have qualified on merit from the Premiership, the Greene King IPA Championship, the Guinness PRO12, the Top 14, the PRO D2, and from the Continental Shield will compete in the 2017/18 Challenge Cup in five pools of four.
• The clubs are divided into four tiers based on the qualification positions from their respective leagues and on the Continental Shield. A draw will be carried out in advance of the pool draw proper to complete the tiers.
• Each of the five pools will include one club from each of the four tiers.
• Each pool will have at least one club from the Premiership, the Guinness PRO12 and the TOP 14.
• There will be no more than two clubs from the same league in a pool.
• No pool will contain two Guinness PRO12 clubs from the same country.
• Clubs from the same league will be kept apart until the Tier 4 allocation.
• A club from the Continental Shield cannot be drawn into a pool which contains two TOP 14 clubs or two Premiership clubs.