Premier League Fixture List Revealed

On Wednesday, the Premier League will unveil the schedule for the 2025/26 season, which will have 2,036 games. The league promised to give players at least 60 hours of rest between games over the holidays and not to schedule any games on Christmas Eve.

The Premier League said that it takes almost 18 months to make the schedule. This involves figuring out how to get to the games, how to police them, and how to avoid scheduling conflicts between the teams.

Glenn Thompson, the league’s fixture planner, talked about how he finalizes the schedule. He said that he gets the playing dates at the beginning of the year. He also said that computers are used after figuring out the makeup of each division. Thompson added, “The Premier League gives me the playing dates at the start of the year.”

“We [with the computer] start after the last Football League playoff, when we know the makeup of each division.” He went on to say, “We put each club in a pairing grid that shows when they will be at home.”

He went on to say that the computer knows which clubs are at home and which are away, so it randomly mixes things around to make sure matches are scheduled correctly.

Thompson said, “The fixture computer knows which clubs are at home and which ones are away on every date in the season. Then it mixes them up randomly to figure out the matches.”

Thompson then stressed that they can’t make everyone happy and that all teams would have to make some compromises.

“You can’t make everyone happy.” You can’t do anything to help one club; it’s a compromise for all clubs.

“The Premier League and Football League have 2,036 matches over the course of nine months, and the best thing to do is make sure that all of those matches can be played on time.”