The UEFA Europa League champions will also automatically qualify for the group stages (if they didn’t already through league performance).
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The format of the competition will remain the same with eight groups of four followed by the knockout stages featuring 16 sides.
City also have to negotiate Scottish champions Celtic and Gladbach, who finished fourth in the Bundesliga last season.
They all missed out on this season’s group stage after performing poorly in their respective leagues last season. Barcelona’s director of professional sport Albert Soler told the club’s website: “We’ll give a warm welcome to Guardiola and Claudio Bravo, who will have the chance to say goodbye to the fans. We are certainly looking forward to playing on this stage and this platform and we look forward to the games coming to Leicester”. Italy has just two guaranteed places with one in the play-off.
Representatives from the clubs had met in London with Relevent Sports, organisers of the pre-season friendly competition the International Champions Cup, which it was said the talks were primarily about.
It is understood representatives from UEFA and the European Club Association (ECA) discussed a variety of options to ward off the threat of a breakaway Super League.
Uefa stopped short of guaranteeing captive places for certain big clubs, another possibility which, sources said, was privately discussed in meetings over the past few months.
The draw also brings coach Pep Guardiola back to Barcelona, where he won so much, with his new-look Manchester City side.
One of those was in the Champions League, in Germany against Borussia Dortmund, but he never featured at home in Europe.
French giants Paris Saint-Germain clash with Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal in Group A.
Group B: Benfica (Portugal), Napoli (Italy), Dynamo Kiev (Ukraine), Besiktas (Turkey).
GROUP D: Bayern Munich, Atletico Madrid, PSV Eindhoven, Rostov.
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Tottenham will face CSKA Moscow, Monaco and Bayer Leverkusen, while surprise Premier League champions Leicester have been given a relatively benign draw in the shape of Porto, Brugge and Copenhagen.
