Carabao Cup Draw: Chelsea and Tottenham Face Early Challenge
Chelsea and Tottenham will discover tonight exactly how steep their first hurdle of the season will be.
The Carabao Cup second-round draw drops them into a competition they are more used to joining later, a blunt reminder of last season’s bruising Premier League finishes — 10th for Chelsea, 17th for Spurs, and no European football for either. The price for that underachievement is an early August date with the domestic cup that so often shapes a club’s mood before autumn has even arrived.
Early entry, high stakes
The draw takes place tonight, Monday August 10, 2026, in the build-up to the Devon derby between Plymouth and Exeter at Home Park, with the balls expected to come out of the bag at around 7.20pm BST.
Sky Sports presenter David Prutton will host the ceremony, with Jobi McAnuff and Jamie Mackie tasked with pulling out the ties that could define the first month of the season for several managers. One awkward away trip, one fired-up lower-league side, and the tone of a campaign can shift quickly.
For Chelsea and Tottenham, this is not the glamorous stage of a Champions League night or a marquee Premier League clash. It is more basic than that. It is about control, momentum, and avoiding early embarrassment.
How to follow the draw
The second-round draw will be shown live on Sky Sports Main Event, Sky Sports Football and Sky Sports Ultra HDR. Subscribers can also stream it via the Sky Go app.
For those wanting every twist as it happens, Standard Sport will run a live blog tracking the draw, reaction and the ties as they fall into place.
Who joins the competition now?
This is the moment the Carabao Cup begins to feel like a Premier League affair.
Eleven top-flight clubs enter at this stage, joining the 35 winners from the first round. Chelsea and Tottenham are part of that group, alongside Brentford, Fulham, Newcastle, Everton, Leeds and Nottingham Forest, plus the newly-promoted trio of Coventry, Ipswich and Hull.
The competition is still split regionally for this round, north and south kept apart to limit travel and stoke local rivalries. Only from the third round does the draw open up fully.
The three clubs relegated from the Premier League last season — West Ham, Burnley and Wolves — have already been thrown into the thick of it in the first round. All three have navigated that stage successfully: West Ham beating Portsmouth 3-1, Burnley edging Notts County on penalties after a 1-1 draw, and Wolves sweeping aside Port Vale 3-0.
The European elite wait their turn
While Chelsea and Spurs are in the hat tonight, the Premier League’s European contingent remain on the sidelines for now.
Holders Manchester City, along with Arsenal, Manchester United, Aston Villa and Liverpool, are all in the Champions League this season. Bournemouth, Sunderland and Crystal Palace take their places in the Europa League, with Brighton in the Conference League.
Those nine clubs will not enter the Carabao Cup until the third round next month, when the competition’s tone changes again and the trophy’s current owners, City, begin their defence.
First-round landscape
The opening round has already thinned the field and thrown up its usual mix of routine wins, nervy nights and penalty shootouts.
In the Northern Section, Wolves’ 3-0 victory over Port Vale and Sheffield United’s 3-0 win at Mansfield underlined the strength of the bigger clubs at this stage, while Middlesbrough edged Wrexham 1-0 and Sheffield Wednesday did the same against Bolton. Burnley, Barnsley, Stockport, Preston and Salford all needed penalties to get through, with West Brom impressive in a 4-1 win at Rotherham and Blackpool winning 3-1 at Grimsby.
In the Southern Section, West Ham’s 3-1 success against Portsmouth stood out among several tight contests. Millwall knocked out QPR on penalties after a 1-1 draw, Birmingham stunned Swansea 1-0 away, and Luton cruised past Gillingham 3-0. Norwich hit four against MK Dons, Southampton won 2-0 at Colchester, and Leicester progressed with a 1-0 win over Northampton. Cardiff edged a five-goal game against Swindon, while Charlton’s 3-1 win at Cheltenham and Reading’s penalty success at Bromley added to a busy round.
One tie remains: Plymouth vs Exeter, the Devon derby that frames tonight’s draw and will complete the list of second-round participants.
What comes next
Ball numbers for the second round will be confirmed once that final first-round match is done, locking in the full line-up for the regionalised draw.
Second-round ties are scheduled for the week commencing August 24, back in the familiar midweek slot that often forces managers into early decisions about rotation, priorities and how seriously they want to chase silverware.
For Chelsea and Tottenham, that decision might already be made. No European distraction. A clear route to Wembley if they get it right. An early exit, though, would say plenty about where these two London clubs really stand at the start of this new season.
