The 2012–13 UEFA Europa League group stage featured 48 teams: the 7 automatic qualifiers, the 31 winners of the play-off round, and the 10 losing teams from the Champions League play-off round.
[1] The teams were drawn into twelve groups of four, and played each other home-and-away in a round-robin format.
[2] The draw for the group stage was held on 31 August 2012, 13:00 CEST (UTC+2), at Grimaldi Forum, Monaco.
Teams were seeded into four pots based on their 2012 UEFA club coefficients.
If two or more teams are equal on points on completion of the group matches, the following criteria are applied to determine the rankings:[2] The matchdays were 20 September, 4 October, 25 October, 8 November, 22 November, and 6 December 2012.