Everything you need to sort out before the first deadline: how the squad works, how points are scored, what the armband does, what the chips are, and why everyone keeps muttering about taking a −4. Up to date for 2026/27, with diagrams and worked examples.
You pick a squad of real Premier League players with a £100.0m budget. They go out and play real matches, and you score points for what they do out there.
The season runs across 38 gameweeks (GW) — one per round of fixtures. Every gameweek has a deadline: your team locks 90 minutes before the first kick-off. After that nothing can be changed, and the points come in on their own.
It is free to play, at fantasy.premierleague.com. You compete in the overall rankings — usually 10–11 million managers — and in mini-leagues against people you know. The mini-leagues are the real point of the whole thing.
I run one of my own — it is waiting at the end of this guide. Join before the first deadline: come in later and your points only count from the gameweek you joined.
The squad is fixed by position: 2 goalkeepers, 5 defenders, 5 midfielders, 3 forwards. Each gameweek you name 11 of them as your starting XI, and the other 4 sit on the bench.
The two limits beginners trip over most: no more than 3 players from any one club, and a £100.0m budget — not a penny over.
Your first squad can cost up to £100.0m. After that the number takes on a life of its own: players rise and fall in price, and your squad value moves with them. Buy well and a month later you are sitting on £102.4m and room to manoeuvre. Load up on the players everyone else is selling and you end up at £98.7m, unable to afford the premium you actually want.
Worth knowing: squad value earns you no points by itself. It is simply buying power for future transfers. Next to your rank you will see two numbers — Squad Value (what your 15 players are worth) and In the Bank (what you have not spent); together they make up your current budget. Exactly how selling prices are worked out is in the pricing section below.
The base table has barely changed in years. Learn it once and the rest of the game is built on top of it.
| Action | GK | DEF | MID | FWD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Appearing for up to 60 minutes | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 |
| Playing 60+ minutes | +2 | +2 | +2 | +2 |
| Goal scored | +10 | +6 | +5 | +4 |
| Assist | +3 | +3 | +3 | +3 |
| Clean sheet 60+ minutes needed | +4 | +4 | +1 | 0 |
| Defensive contribution DefCon | — | +2 | +2 | +2 |
| Every 3 saves | +1 | — | — | — |
| Penalty saved | +5 | — | — | — |
| Bonus points | +1…3 | +1…3 | +1…3 | +1…3 |
| Every 2 goals conceded | −1 | −1 | 0 | 0 |
| Penalty missed | −2 | −2 | −2 | −2 |
| Own goal | −2 | −2 | −2 | −2 |
| Yellow card | −1 | −1 | −1 | −1 |
| Red card | −3 | −3 | −3 | −3 |
A defender gets 6 for a goal, a forward only 4. On top of that a defender can pick up a clean sheet (+4) and DefCon (+2). That is why the best defenders from attacking sides outscore mid-range forwards — and the main reason not to pour your entire budget into the front line.
Take Gabriel (Arsenal, defender, £8.0m — 209 points last season). Arsenal win 2–0, Gabriel heads one in from a corner and spends the afternoon clearing everything that comes into the box.
Introduced in 2025/26 and kept for 2026/27: a player earns +2 in a match if he racks up enough defensive actions. The threshold depends on position:
It caps at +2 per match and is awarded regardless of the result. Goalkeepers are not covered by the rule.
Cheap workhorses from mid-table suddenly became reliable scorers. The defender Senesi picked up roughly 50 points last season from this rule alone — the equivalent of eight defender goals, earned without a single shot on target. So look past the goals: check how much a player tackles and clears.
After every match the Bonus Points System (BPS) runs its own formula to work out who was most useful. The top three get +3, +2 and +1. This sits on top of everything else — score a goal and you will usually collect the goal points and a bonus as well.
What changed for 2026/27: the formula was reworked, and it is a redistribution rather than a pay rise — there are still exactly 6 bonus points per match (3+2+1), they simply go to different people now.
The problem was that BPS paid generously for defensive actions — clearances, tackles, interceptions. The result was that bonus points kept going to centre-backs and holding midfielders, for the very same actions that had already earned them DefCon. The same work, counted twice.
What they did about it:
The upshot: centre-backs and holders now win bonus far less often, and the freed-up places in the top three go to goalkeepers, attacking full-backs and forward players. For a beginner the takeaway is simple — a top-club keeper and an attacking full-back are worth noticeably more than they were a year ago.
Projected bonus is now shown live during the match, from the 20th minute onwards, and shifts as the game goes on. It is a projection though: the final numbers are locked in after the final whistle.
Every gameweek you hand one player the armband — his points are doubled — and name a vice-captain behind him. Across a season the gap between good and bad captaincy runs into hundreds of points. Nothing else in this game moves the needle nearly as hard.
A working rule for a first season: captain the most expensive attacker with a home game against weak opposition. Do not overthink it. In 2026/27 the obvious default is Erling Haaland (£15.5m, 239 points last season), especially in the weeks he is at home to Coventry or Ipswich.
Every fixture in the game carries a Fixture Difficulty Rating — a 1-to-5 score painted in the league's own colours. It is the first thing anyone checks before a transfer: not who is good in the abstract, but who has an easy run coming up.
In practice: never judge a single fixture, judge a run of four to six. A player with five green games ahead is worth more than a star facing three away trips to the big sides.
If someone in your starting XI does not take the pitch at all (0 minutes), the first eligible player on your bench comes in automatically — after every match of the gameweek has been played. There is nothing to press.
Two situations where the swap will not happen:
Your backup goalkeeper is not part of the 1-2-3 order. He comes on in exactly one case: your first-choice keeper plays no minutes at all. And he can only replace a goalkeeper — if it is a defender who fails to play, your reserve keeper stays put, even if he is listed first.
Which is why bench order is not decoration. Put the man who will actually play first, not the most expensive one. And keep a second keeper who at least occasionally starts: if neither of your goalkeepers plays, you take a zero in the most predictable slot in the squad.
Every gameweek you are given 1 free transfer. Unused ones roll over, but no more than 5 can sit in the bank. Every transfer beyond your free ones costs −4 points — a hit.
A player's price moves £0.1m at a time, overnight UK time, driven by how many managers are buying and selling him. Buy someone at £7.0m and watch him climb to £7.4m and your squad value has gone up by £0.4m.
But you will sell him for less than he is worth today. The half-profit rule: when you sell you get the price you paid plus half of the rise, rounded down to the nearest £0.1m.
Bought at £7.0m → price climbs to £7.5m → profit £0.5m → half is £0.25m → round down to £0.2m → you sell at £7.2m. A fall, on the other hand, hits you in full: down to £6.8m and £6.8m is what you get.
The game now has a built-in price change predictor, showing who is likely to rise or fall overnight. That used to mean a trip to third-party sites.
In your first season, prices are noise. A £0.3m edge will not win you a mini-league; a bad captain pick will lose you one. Chasing price rises at the expense of your squad is the classic second-month mistake.
Chips are one-shot boosters. In 2026/27 there are two sets of four: the first must be spent before the GW19 deadline, the second lasts until the end of the season. Anything unused from the first half burns — it cannot be carried over. Only one chip can be played in a given gameweek.
| Chip | What it does | When to play it |
|---|---|---|
| Wildcard | Unlimited free transfers for one gameweek. The new squad is yours to keep. | When the team has fallen apart: injuries, mistakes, 4+ transfers needed |
| Free Hit | Unlimited transfers for one gameweek, then the squad reverts. | In a blank or a double gameweek |
| Triple Captain | Your captain scores ×3 instead of ×2. | Haaland at home to a relegation side; or in a double gameweek |
| Bench Boost | All 15 players score, bench included. | When all 15 are playing, ideally twice |
A normal gameweek is 10 matches, all 20 clubs playing once. It does not always work out that way — and mini-leagues are won on exactly those irregularities.
The cause is always the same: a Premier League fixture had to be moved. The slot it left behind becomes a blank; the slot it lands in becomes a double. Fixtures get moved for several reasons.
| Cause | How it shows up | When |
|---|---|---|
| FA Cup | Premier League clubs still in the competition play a cup tie instead of a league game. The big blanks cluster around the fifth round and the semi-finals. | February, April |
| Carabao Cup | The two finalists do not play in the league on final weekend — a small but entirely predictable blank. | Late February / March |
| European competitionsUCL, UEL, Conference League | Rarely the direct cause of a blank, but they decide whether a postponement becomes one. Normally a moved fixture is simply replayed midweek and the gameweek stays intact. If the club has European football that Wednesday there is nowhere to put it, so the match moves into a different gameweek — and that is when a hole appears. | February to May |
| Rearranged fixtures | Everything moved earlier in the season comes back into the calendar midweek. That is what creates the doubles. | March to May |
| Weather and logistics | Snow, storms, transport problems, policing. Unpredictable. | December to February |
| Force majeure | Covid produced a record number of postponements in 2020–21. The mourning period for the Queen in 2022 wiped out an entire gameweek. | Any time |
Last season showed how it works: five Premier League clubs were in three European competitions at once, and their crowded calendars turned cup postponements into a chain of blanks and doubles that ran into May. On top of that came one entirely predictable blank from the Carabao Cup final, where the two finalists simply had no league game that weekend.
Since 2024/25 the FA Cup has scrapped replays, and the final has moved to the penultimate weekend of the season, onto a Saturday of its own with no Premier League football. Blanks are noticeably rarer than in the era the older guides describe. Do not plan your season around one every month.
Exact dates are announced as the season goes along — they depend on who progresses in the cups. The rough shape is this:
The practical conclusion: hold your second set of chips until spring. Bench Boost and Triple Captain are worth twice as much in a double gameweek, and a Free Hit is the only way to survive a big blank without tearing your team apart.
On 8 September 2022 Elizabeth II died and the Premier League called off all 10 matches of the coming round. The interesting part is what FPL did: the deadline was not cancelled. It passed at 11:00 on the Saturday exactly as scheduled, teams locked — and the entire world, all ten million managers, scored precisely zero for that gameweek.
The people who suffered were those who had taken a −4 before the deadline: the transfers went through, the points were deducted, and nobody was left to play. The one way out turned out to be a Free Hit, which was handed back and reverted the squad to the previous week. The moral: an act of God does not cancel the deadline, which is one more argument against taking hits for no reason.
If you are reading older guides or watching last year's videos, here is what is different:
£100m across 15 players averages out at £6.7m each. But no squad is average: there are always 2–3 expensive players and 4–5 cheap ones who sit on the bench and barely play.
The structure that works for a first season:
| Slots | Range | Who that is |
|---|---|---|
| 1–2 premiums | £11.0–15.5m | Haaland (£15.5m), Bruno Fernandes (£12.0m) |
| 3–4 solid picks | £7.5–9.5m | Palmer (£9.5m), Isak (£9.0m), Gabriel (£8.0m), Thiago (£8.0m) |
| 4–5 mid-price | £5.5–7.0m | Dewsbury-Hall (£6.5m), Calvert-Lewin (£6.0m) |
| 4–5 fillers | £4.0–5.0m | Cheap defenders and keepers for the bench |
Your four bench players score almost nothing — they are there in case of injuries. Do not spend money on them. But do not buy corpses either: a £4.0m player who never appears is worse than a £4.5m one who reliably plays 90 minutes, because the second will save you through an autosub.
Promoted from the Championship this season: Coventry, Ipswich and Hull. Their players are the cheapest in the game, from £4.0m, and also the lowest-scoring. Bench material only.
fantasy.premierleague.com; signing up takes a minute. Everyone in your mini-leagues sees the team name, so choose it wisely.
Open the FDR and find the clubs with a green opening run. Take your defenders and your keeper from those sides — they cost less, and the clean sheets arrive in a stream.
Start with a premium attacker and two or three defenders from the best sides. Everything else gets fitted around the budget.
Check they are in the XI and not third-choice keepers. The starting eleven matters more than the bench, but the bench still has to breathe.
Captain a dependable goalscorer with a home game. The vice is your next most dependable, but from a different club, so one setback cannot cost you both.
First in line goes the man certain to play. Those are free points when an autosub fires.
Ask friends for a league code or start your own. And look in on the Rookie League — first-season managers only.
Friday 21 August, 18:30 BST. After that deadlines are usually Saturday morning, but check every week — they move.
A global rank out of ten million is a number for the ego. The real game happens in mini-leagues, and they come in several formats that play very differently.
The moment you register you end up in several leagues without lifting a finger: the overall standings, your country's league, the supporters' league of whichever club you picked, a cohort league of everyone who signed up in the same gameweek, and the overall cup.
You can run plenty of your own: up to 30 private leagues, with no cap on members, and up to 5 public ones, where you are dropped in with 19 random strangers.
| Format | How it is scored | What it feels like |
|---|---|---|
| Classictotal points | Simply the sum of your points across the season. Most points, highest place. | A marathon. Rewards consistency, punishes fidgeting. The default format and the fairest one. |
| Head-to-HeadH2H | Each gameweek you are drawn against one opponent. More points that week means 3 in the table, a draw 1, a defeat 0. Transfer costs come off your score. | A sprint and a lottery. You can score 80 and lose, or score 40 and win. More thrill, less justice. |
| Cupcreated for you | Every league gets its own cup automatically. A draw, then straight knockout: whoever scores more that week, hits included, goes through. | Pure knockout. One bad week and you are out, even if you led all season. |
Worth spelling out, because the rules do not make it obvious: the cup does not run all season, only at the end. Last season the overall cup started in GW15 and the final, between the last two standing, was played in GW38. For a private league the starting gameweek is set by whoever created it.
What that means in practice: for the first few months the cup affects nothing at all. Come spring, though, you have a second game running in parallel — and there it very much matters which week you saved your Triple Captain or Bench Boost for. Going out in a quarter-final because of a bad captain pick stings more than dropping a couple of places in a table.
You can join a Classic league at any point in the season, but your points only count from the gameweek you joined. Join your friends' league in GW10 and the first nine gameweeks do not exist as far as that table is concerned. Which is why you want to be in before the first deadline.
These are not mini-leagues inside FPL but standalone games with their own rules. You can run them alongside your main team.
Classic. It forgives mistakes and shows you whether you are improving. H2H and the cup are nice to have on top — they run off the same team anyway, so they cost you no extra work. Leave Draft for your second season: it asks you to know squad depth, not just the top 30 players.
Live points only arrived inside the game this season, and they are still the bare minimum. Third-party trackers show you not just what you have scored but what it means for your place in the mini-league.
www.fplgameweek.com — a free live dashboard. Enter your manager ID and keep the tab open all weekend instead of the official site.
What it does better than FPL itself:
The site is free, there is an Android app, and ads can be turned off through Patreon. Some of the content there is about betting; that has nothing to do with fantasy, just do not confuse the two.
The rest arrives on its own over the first couple of months. Nobody builds a good squad at the first attempt — the only thing that matters is not quitting after a bad week.