FC Utrecht, who qualified for the second round of the UEFA Europa League qualifying phase after finishing fourth in the Eredivisie, will meet the winner of the first-round matchup between Moldovan cup winners Sheriff Tiraspol and Kosovar cup winners Prishtina.
Sheriff Tiraspol, best known for their shocking 2-1 UEFA Champions League win over Real Madrid at the Bernabeu in 2021, failed to win the Moldovan Super Liga for the second season in a row and for the fourth time since 2001.
11-time Superleague winners Prishtina grabbed their ninth Kosovar Cup win after beating Llapi 1-0 in the final. They will appear in Europe for the first time since 2021, when they were knocked out in the third round of the Conference League qualifiers by Bodo/Glimt.
AZ
Play-off winners AZ will face the loser of the Europa League first-round matchup between Ukrainian giants Shakhtar Donetsk and Finnish Veikkausliga side Ilves. AZ qualified for the second round of the UEFA Conference League qualifiers after beating FC Twente in May.
Shakhtar Donetsk, who since 2020 have played and operated in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, failed to win the Ukrainian Premier League for the second time since 2017 and even finished in third, behind Oleksandriya and champions Dynamo Kyiv.
Ilves finished second in the Veikkausliga behind KuPS and will play a second-straight European campaign. The Tampere side have yet to qualify for a European competition since the 1991/92 UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, despite featuring in qualifiers in the Europa and Conference League three times in the past six seasons.
Both FC Utrecht and AZ will start their European campaigns on Thursday, July 24th, with an away game at their respective opponents. The returns will be played a week later, on Thursday, July 31st.