Fantasy Premier League 2026-27: your gameweek 1 guide
The Fantasy Premier League deadline for gameweek 1 lands this Friday 21 August at 18:30 BST, 19:30 in continental Europe: an hour and a half before Arsenal host Coventry at the Emirates. The game opened on 23 July and has already passed 6.3 million registered squads. If yours is still unfinished, here is what is worth knowing before you hit save.
What changes this season
The game is launching live updates. Provisional bonus points appear from the 20th minute of every match and keep moving while the football is still being played, and both the overall rankings and your mini-leagues now refresh in real time instead of waiting for full time.
The bonus system has been redesigned under the bonnet. The negative point for being tackled disappears, clearances and blocks are worth one bonus point per three actions rather than per two, and goalkeeper saves have been reordered. The stated intention is to cut the overlap with defensive contribution points and improve life for goalkeepers, full-backs and forwards.
The end of the gameweek has also been pushed back: points are not final until nine in the morning on the day after the last match, to leave room for the data to be reviewed. And there will be no extra transfer window in December, simply because the Africa Cup of Nations is played in June and July 2027 and does not cut the season in half.
The most practical addition is the official price change predictor: a tool that tells you daily which players are about to rise or fall, refreshes every quarter of an hour and warns you with colour-coded labels. Prices move at midnight UK time, with a cap of £0.3m per gameweek.
What does NOT change
- A £100m budget and up to five free transfers that can be banked
- Two sets of chips: Wildcard, Free Hit, Triple Captain and Bench Boost in each half, eight in total
- The first set expires at the gameweek 19 deadline, on Saturday 2 January 2027
- Defensive contributions stay the same: 10 actions for defenders, 12 for midfielders and forwards, 2 points
- The Assistant Manager chip is not coming back: it was withdrawn last season and remains out
Prices: one record and several cuts
Erling Haaland starts at £15.5m, the highest price any player has ever carried in the history of the game. Behind him, and this is the surprise of the summer, Bruno Fernandes climbs three million in one go to £12.0m: it is the biggest rise of the year and it makes him Haaland's only companion above £9.5m. Gabriel is the most expensive defender at £8.0m and David Raya the most expensive goalkeeper at £6.0m, the first to reach that figure in five years.
At the other end there are some tempting cuts: Alexander Isak drops to £9.0m, Viktor Gyökeres to £7.5m, Martin Ødegaard to £6.5m, Cole Palmer to £9.5m and Ollie Watkins to £8.0m. Phil Foden, still at City, shows up at £7.0m, his lowest price since 2020. One general warning: eighteen of the twenty highest scorers still in the game have gone up in price.
The most-owned players
- Erling Haaland, £15.5m, in roughly 70% of squads
- João Pedro, £7.5m, close to 60%
- Bruno Fernandes, £12.0m, around 49%
- Dominik Szoboszlai, £7.0m, about 41%
- David Raya, £6.0m, in roughly 34%
- Gabriel, £8.0m, and Antoine Semenyo, £8.5m, both close to 27%
The biggest riser over the past week is Bryan Mbeumo, up seven percentage points to just under 24%. The four non-negotiables, according to the game's official analyst, are Haaland, Bruno Fernandes, Gabriel and João Pedro.
The budget enablers
The opening run rewards whoever finds cheap defenders who actually start. Tyrick Mitchell, at £4.5m, racked up 135 points last year and is the official recommendation in that bracket; Luke Shaw comes in at the same price. Ethan Ampadu, at £5.5m, was the game's third-best midfielder for defensive contribution points. Further forward, Dominic Calvert-Lewin at £6.0m takes the penalties at Leeds and William Osula, also £6.0m, scored five goals in his last seven matches. One structural detail: every defender at the three promoted clubs costs £4.0m and there are eight first-choice goalkeepers below £5.0m.
Who has the best and worst fixtures
The official fixture difficulty index for the first six gameweeks points to Everton, Liverpool and Manchester United as the kindest openers. Liverpool's case stands out: they do not meet any of last season's top ten in their first four matches. At the opposite end sits Bournemouth, who travel to City and Chelsea and host Liverpool in that stretch, followed by Coventry, Leeds and Hull.
The gameweek 1 captain
Haaland is the majority pick and with good reason: City host Bournemouth at home and the Norwegian has scored against them in each of their last four meetings. He has also been the game's top scorer after the first six gameweeks in all four of his seasons in Manchester. The sensible alternative is Bruno Fernandes, who travels to newly promoted Hull and then hosts Ipswich.
Injuries and suspensions worth checking
Wesley Fofana misses the first two gameweeks through suspension, as does Joachim Andersen for the first. Arsenal are without William Saliba and Jurriën Timber, and Bruno Guimarães is a doubt after coming off at half-time in the Community Shield. Jérémy Doku will be out for several weeks at City. And watch out for a name still sitting in plenty of squads: Eli Junior Kroupi, who was reclassified as a midfielder and rose three million, has had surgery and might not be back until November.
Chips: why so many managers are holding the Wildcard
The debate of the opening weeks is whether to play the Bench Boost in gameweek 1 or gameweek 2, because using it early lets you unwind the money tied up in your bench with the Wildcard afterwards. But there is a weighty argument for not rushing: nine of the twenty clubs begin with a new manager, the biggest turnover of dugouts in the Premier League era. Until real line-ups are on the board, nobody knows who plays where.
"A forward at fifteen and a half million, a midfielder who jumps three in one go and nine managers starting out at once: rarely has a gameweek 1 forced this much guesswork."