The 2017–18 UEFA Europa League group stage began on 14 September and ended on 7 December 2017.
[1] A total of 48 teams competed in the group stage to decide 24 of the 32 places in the knockout phase of the 2017–18 UEFA Europa League.
[2] The draw for the group stage was held on 25 August 2017, 13:00 CEST, at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco.
[4] 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.
The fixtures were decided after the draw, using a computer draw not shown to public, with the following match sequence (Regulations Article 15.02):[2] There were certain scheduling restrictions: for example, teams from the same city in general were not scheduled to play at home on the same matchday (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) were not scheduled to play at home on the last matchday (due to cold weather and simultaneous kick-off times).