Scottish Premiership 2026/27: Celtic, Hearts and Rangers
The Scottish Premiership began on Friday 31 July, and it opened with something that says plenty about where the competition stands: all six matches of the first round were shown live, which had never happened before in Scottish football.
A title settled on the final day
Celtic won the 2025/26 league with 82 points to Heart of Midlothian's 80, and settled it on the final day, 16 May, beating Hearts 3-1 at home. Lawrence Shankland scored first, Arne Engels equalised from the spot, and Daizen Maeda and Callum Osmand finished it. It is Celtic's fifth consecutive title and the fifty-sixth of their history.
Hearts deserve a paragraph of their own: they led the table for two hundred and fifty days, went into the final round in front, and finished two points short of a first championship since 1960. And having done that, they lost their manager and their captain, both to the same destination. Scotland is still waiting for a champion from outside the Old Firm, as it has been since 1985.
At the bottom, Livingston went down after a single season up, relegated with three games to spare and just two wins in 38 matches. St Mirren survived the play-off and St Johnstone came up as Championship champions, so it was a straight swap: no second-tier club won the play-off.
Celtic and their 74-year-old manager
Celtic's dugout had a chaotic year: Brendan Rodgers resigned, Martin O'Neill came in as caretaker in October 2025, Wilfried Nancy arrived in December and O'Neill returned. He won the league and the Scottish Cup, and on 11 June 2026 the club handed him a permanent one-year deal with an option. He is 74 and it is his fourth spell in the job: the first ran from 2000 to 2005.
In the market, Celtic signed striker Kasper Høgh from Bodø/Glimt in a deal the Scottish press put at eleven million pounds plus add-ons, which would be a club record — the club has not confirmed a figure — along with Camilo Durán from Qarabağ. Out went Daizen Maeda to Ipswich, Maik Nawrocki to Lens and Luis Palma to Lech Poznań, while Kasper Schmeichel retired.
Rangers and a fifth manager in five years
Rangers appointed Derek McInnes, and they appointed him from Hearts. He is their fifth manager in five years, a statistic that explains better than any other why they have not won the league since 2021.
Two key pieces of the runners-up followed him from Tynecastle: Lawrence Shankland, who is also the new captain, and Cammy Devlin, both on free transfers. Going the other way, James Tavernier — captain for a decade — also left on a free when his contract expired. The squad was completed by Ivor Pandur, Vanja Dragojević, Olwethu Makhanya, Ross McCrorie, Dan Neil and loanee Ben Godfrey.
The rest of the division
Hearts answered the double departure by hiring the Belgian Wouter Vrancken on 25 June on a two-year deal; he was named Belgium's manager of the year last season. He starts having gone out of the Champions League in the second qualifying round to Sturm Graz, which drops the club into the Europa League third qualifying round.
- Motherwell — Alfred Johansson, 35, the youngest manager in the league, through in Europe after eliminating HB of the Faroe Islands.
- Hibernian — David Gray, in post since June 2024, fifth last season.
- Aberdeen — Stephen Robinson faces his first full season at Pittodrie after a poor ninth-place finish.
- Dundee United — Jim Goodwin, no European football, opened the season on Friday at home to Rangers.
The two 2025/26 cups were shared. Celtic won the Scottish Cup on 23 May, 3-1 against Dunfermline at Hampden in front of 49,613, through Maeda, Engels and Iheanacho, completing their fourteenth domestic double. And the League Cup went to St Mirren, who beat Celtic 3-1 at Hampden on 14 December in front of 49,914 with two goals from Jonah Ayunga: their second win in the competition and their first in twelve years. Celtic were managed that day by Wilfried Nancy, in his opening weeks in the job.
St Mirren, incidentally, won a major trophy and finished eleventh on 34 points, one place above relegation. Both things, in the same season.
Format and rules
The system is unchanged: twelve clubs, three rounds of fixtures to 33 matches, and then the league splits into two groups of six who play one further round each, to 38 games. The last pre-split round is 10 April 2027 and the season ends in mid-May.
What has genuinely changed is the grass. Top-flight clubs voted in 2024 to ban artificial surfaces in the Premiership from this season, and the rule is now in force: Kilmarnock have converted Rugby Park back to natural turf, and Falkirk were granted an exceptional one-year extension to keep playing on synthetic, with grass due to be laid in the summer of 2027. The league also approved minimum machinery and staffing requirements for pitch maintenance at its June meeting.
There is another, less-discussed change: from this summer clubs in all four divisions may field fifteen-year-olds in every league competition, which was not previously allowed. Several have already debuted in the League Cup group stage.
The laws of the game have changed too, under the IFAB amendments in force since 1 July 2026: VAR may now intervene on a clearly incorrect second yellow card, there is a five-second visual countdown on throw-ins and goal kicks, a substituted player must leave the pitch within ten seconds, and there is a one-minute pause when a player receives treatment. The calendar has also absorbed FIFA's new international window, which merges the September and October breaks: because of those lost dates, there is no winter break this season.
"A champion managed by a 74-year-old, a runner-up dismantled by its rival, and a third-placed club starting its fifth manager in five years."
- Simulate all 38 Premiership matchdays and build the full table.
- See whether Celtic make it six in a row or Hearts take it off them.
- Change any result and watch the table rearrange instantly.
- Track the European places and the relegation fight as the season runs.
"Open the Scottish league simulator and decide who wins it this time."