Supercomputer · League One

Plays the rest of the season 10,000 times and shows how often each club wins.

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League One: four go down, and that shapes the whole table

League One is the hardest division in the English Football League to stay in. Four of its 24 clubs are relegated to League Two every season, the largest drop zone in the top four tiers both in raw numbers and as a share of the division. Two go up automatically, with third to sixth contesting the play-offs.

When the EFL widened the Championship play-offs for 2026/27, it kept League One's at four clubs, so sixth remains the last promotion place and seventh gets nothing. Across 46 matches, with no European or cup qualification attached, the table reduces to three questions for every club: promoted, safe, or relegated.

League One projection: common questions

How many teams are relegated from League One?

Four, all into League Two. Proportionally that is the widest relegation zone in the top four divisions of English football, and it is why clubs projected around 15th or 16th on this page still show a relegation probability well above zero deep into the season.

Did League One's play-offs expand like the Championship's?

No. When the EFL confirmed the Championship's move to six play-off clubs from 2026/27, it stated there were no plans to change League One or League Two. Both keep the four-team format of third to sixth, two-legged semi-finals and a final at Wembley.

What points total is needed for promotion here?

The model reports a range rather than a target, deliberately. Promotion totals shift considerably from season to season in a 24-club division where everyone meets everyone twice, so the midpoint of a projection is best read next to the automatic-promotion and play-off percentages beside it.

▸How does the supercomputer work?

Every remaining fixture is simulated with a Poisson model: each club gets an attack rating and a defence rating from the goals it has scored and conceded this season, and the expected goals of a match come from combining one side's attack with the other's defence, plus a moderate home advantage.

Before a ball is kicked the model does not start from zero: each club begins with a prior strength built from last season's finish and the market value of its squad, with the tails capped so no extreme is absurd. That starting point hands over weight to real results as they arrive, and by around matchday ten only the actual goals are talking.

The remaining season is played 10,000 times in a separate browser process, so the page never freezes. The title, top-four, top-six and relegation percentages are simply how often each outcome happened across those 10,000 seasons, and each club's points range covers the central 90% of its simulated finishes.

What the model does not know: injuries, transfers, sanctions, European fixtures or motivation. It uses goals and only goals — which is why it is in beta.