The 2016–17 UEFA Europa League group stage began on 15 September and ended on 9 December 2016.
A total of 48 teams competed in the group stage to decide 24 of the 32 places in the knockout phase of the 2016–17 UEFA Europa League.
There were other restrictions: for example, teams from the same city in general did not play at home on the same matchday (UEFA tried to avoid teams from the same city playing at home on the same day, due to logistics and crowd control), and teams in certain countries (e.g. Russia) did not play at home on the last matchday (due to cold weather and simultaneous kick-off times).
On 17 July 2014, the UEFA emergency panel ruled that Ukrainian and Russian clubs would not be drawn against each other "until further notice" due to the political unrest between the countries.
[9] The match kickoff times for matchdays 5 and 6 in Turkey, and all simultaneous matches in the same group on matchday 6, were changed to 17:00 CET due to the decision of the Turkish government to use the UTC+3 time zone all year round starting from September 2016.