ENGLAND will come up against world champions Spain in next year’s Nations League.

The Lionesses were drawn in Group A3 alongside the current Nations League holders, who they played in the 2023 World Cup final in Australia, with Olga Carmona’s goal the difference.

Portugal and Belgium complete the group, with the latter playing against England in last season’s Nations League, winning one and losing one against them.

England boss Sarina Wiegman said: “It’s an exciting draw. We have Spain – a top, world-class team – which I think is exciting because it’s another opportunity to play at that level.

“It’s really good that we play Belgium because in the last Nations League we lost when we played them away and we really underperformed. We can prove to ourselves now that we can do much better than that in the two games. I’m happy with that one, they’re tough.

“Portugal are a very talented team. We played them before we went to the World Cup and we drew with them. We had a lot of the ball but we couldn’t score and they were very dangerous on the counter-attack. They have a lot of technical players.

“There are different opponents and I’m really looking forward to it because we’ll be challenged in different areas of the game. And of course we’ll give them challenges too.”

Last year’s competition saw England finish second in Group A1 after Netherlands finished top with a better goal difference, but Scotland ended bottom of that group after only picking up two points.

Scotland have since earned promotion back to League A after finishing top of their Euro 2025 qualifying group earlier this year and will meet Netherlands again in their pool, while they were also drawn alongside Austria and Germany.

The league phase of the competition is set to take place between February and June 2025, while the finals and promotion and relegation games will be staged between October and December.