The 2026/27 EFL season begins on Friday, August 14, when promotion favourites Wolverhampton Wanderers host a Blackburn Rovers side who narrowly avoided relegation from the Championship last season.
The following day brings a full programme across the second, third and fourth tiers, before Burnley face West Ham on Sunday in one of the biggest fixtures of the opening weekend.
The Championship has a new play-off system. Leicester City are facing life in League One after a remarkable fall. Sheffield Wednesday are starting again under new ownership, while Bromley are preparing for their first season in the third tier.
Championship play-offs: six teams can now chase promotion
The biggest change in the Championship this season is the expanded play-off system.
Instead of four teams fighting for the final promotion place, six will now be involved. Teams finishing third through eighth will have a route to Wembley and, ultimately, the Premier League.
The top two still go up automatically, just as in previous years.
Third and fourth will go straight into the semi-finals, while fifth plays eighth and sixth meets seventh in one-off eliminator matches. The higher-ranked team hosts those games.
The winners then join third and fourth in the semi-finals, which remain over two legs. Third will face the lowest-ranked team still standing.
It should make the end of the Championship season even more interesting.
For clubs sitting seventh or eighth, there is now a genuine reason to keep pushing. A few extra points could be the difference between watching the play-offs from home and having a shot at the Premier League.
The Championship has always been brutally competitive, and giving more clubs something meaningful to play for should make the final weeks even more entertaining.
Will West Ham and Wolves be promoted?
Whenever a Premier League club is relegated, the same question follows: can they get back up at the first attempt?
West Ham and Wolves will be expected to do exactly that.
West Ham have kept Nuno Espirito Santo and Jarrod Bowen, which gives them something many relegated clubs lack: continuity. Nuno also knows what it takes to win the Championship, having taken Wolves up in 2018.
Bowen knows the division too, having played for Hull City before making the move to London.
Wolves have taken a different route. Rob Edwards has gone and Cesar Peixoto has come in, meaning there is an element of uncertainty despite the quality in the squad.
The opening weekend could give us an early clue. Wolves face Blackburn on Friday, while West Ham travel to Burnley on Sunday.
Burnley have appointed Nicky Hayen, but anyone tempted to write them off should probably think twice. Burnley have been promoted from the Championship twice in recent seasons, collecting more than 100 points on both occasions.
They know how to get out of this league, even if they don’t know how to stay in the Premier League once they do.
Middlesbrough favourites for top-six finish
Middlesbrough must have wondered what they had done to annoy the football gods last season.
They spent long periods looking like genuine promotion contenders – they actually spent more time inside the top two than out of it – finished fifth and then endured one of the strangest play-off stories imaginable.
After the drama surrounding the Spygate investigation, they eventually made it back into the play-offs before losing the final to Hull City to a stoppage-time goal.
That sort of ending can linger. Instead, Boro have responded by strengthening. Will Lankshear has arrived after scoring 11 goals for Oxford United last season, while Sebastian Berhalter and goalkeeper Radek Vitek add further quality to the squad.
There is a sense that Middlesbrough are not interested in another season of nearly.
Now they need to finish the job, which is easier said than done in the Championship.
Southampton need to recover from spygate
Southampton’s season was overshadowed by the Spygate controversy, but the club now has to put that episode behind it.
Tonda Eckert remains in charge and has been backed by the club despite the fallout from last season. There is also a four-point deduction to overcome, which makes the opening months especially important.
The good news is that Southampton have kept much of their squad together. Daniel Peretz and Cyle Larin have also made permanent moves after their loan spells.
The Saints showed last season that they could recover from a terrible position. Now they have to prove that the run which took them back into contention was not a one-off. Or the product of cheating.
