It may feel like the World Cup has only just ended but the latest instalment of the Premier League is right around the corner.
Reigning champions Arsenal kick off the new season on Friday, August 21 when they host newly-promoted Championship winners Coventry City – with the campaign running all the way until May 30, 2027.
There has been a major shakeup in the dugouts, with nine clubs changing managers over the summer, while some notable names have been on the move in the transfer window.
There have also been a number of changes and tweaks to the regulations, rules and guidelines governing the English top flight, which could make the coming season very different to last term.
Here are the details on everything new in the Premier League for the 2026-27 season.
More refereeing transparency?
The Premier League, together with Pro Ref (formerly PGMOL), has announced a series of measures aiming to “give supporters further insight into how and why decisions are made”.
Officials can now be directly quoted in communications from the league’s Match Centre, including in posts on social media site X, to help explain a decision-making process, including the Video Assistant Referee’s (VAR) reasoning for intervening (or not).
RefCam, which provides a referee’s perspective of a game at eye level, is back after a successful debut season, and has received an upgrade. Not only will clips from the official’s vantage point be shown during live broadcasts, the footage will now come with audio too, providing more of an insight into what players and referees actually talk about. RefCam will continue to be used in “approximately 1-2 games” per week.
RefCam is sticking around (Richard Pelham/Getty Images)
In a significant change, the league’s Key Match Incident (KMI) panel will make its weekly findings public and will be published on the Premier League website each week.
The panel, made up of three former players or coaches, a representative from the league and one from Pro Ref, is an independent body introduced in the 2022-23 season that reviews critical match incidents in the referee’s jurisdiction, ruling on whether an in-game decision was correct or not.
Both the Premier League and Pro Ref said that it will continue to lobby the International Football Association Board (IFAB), which sets the sport’s laws, “to allow more communications from the Match Officials to be broadcast in-game”.
Anti time-wasting measures
Teams have long sought ways to manipulate the clock during games. Whether it’s a leisurely walk over to the corner flag or touchline, or a supposedly injured player staying down on the pitch, trailing sides have often been powerless to prevent valuable seconds from slipping away.
This year however, IFAB has introduced a change to its Laws of the Game to directly combat time-wasting. Players treated for injury on the field must now leave the pitch for a full minute before returning, an increase on the 30 seconds used in the Premier League since the 2024-25 season.
During substitutions, players now only have 10 seconds to depart the pitch. If this is exceeded, their replacement cannot enter the game for another minute.
The rule, in theory, should mean that players applauding fans as they gradually walk to the touchline should become a less frequent sight — although players could still leave the pitch on the nearest touchline and milk the adulation of supporters as they make their way back to the dugout.
This was seen for the first time in the Carabao Cup match between Middlesbrough and Wrexham on August 7, with new Middlesbrough signing Will Lankshear taking too long to leave the field and Fin Cartwright being forced to wait 60 seconds before coming on.
The Premier League will also trial a new law designed to stop tactical ‘goalkeeper timeouts‘. An outfield player will be required to leave the field for one minute from the restart of play when a goalkeeper requests treatment for an injury (unless they require immediate attention after a foul or collision, or if they are bleeding). Coaches have 10 seconds to tell the fourth official who is being temporarily removed, otherwise the captain will have to go off.
The aim of the trial (approved by IFAB), is to “ensure genuine injuries continue to receive appropriate medical attention while removing any potential sporting advantage”, according to the Premier League.
Another major change has been made with throw-ins, with players now being given a five-second countdown to restart play. If the time limit is exceeded, a throw-in will be awarded to the opposing team.
The same limit applies to goal-kicks, with a corner being awarded against the offending team if they take longer than five seconds. Last season, IFAB introduced a rule that saw corners given if a goalkeeper held on the ball while it was in play for more than eight seconds.
As part of the new rule’s implementation, officials are expected to raise their hand to signal a countdown from five. We can already hear entire away ends joining in.
VAR tweaks and officiating changes
Yes, VAR is still very much around and mostly unchanged from last season, which saw the introduction of semi-automated offside technology and officials announcing decisions to crowds.
However, VAR will have new powers when it comes to sending offs, with second yellow cards now eligible for review.
If a player receives a red card for a second bookable offence, the VAR will now be able to recommend a review to the on-field official. However, VAR cannot intervene to recommend a second yellow card, which would lead to a red. It also cannot review first yellow cards.
(Stu Forster/Getty Images)
It is worth noting that VAR will not be used to reverse wrongly awarded corner kicks, as seen at the World Cup this summer. It was one of IFAB’s optional rule changes, which the Premier League has decided not to adopt.
There have been other rule changes in areas that attracted attention last season, though. Clarity has been issued on hair-pulling, which saw multiple Premier League players receive straight red cards last season.
Players will only be sent off “when there is a clear and deliberate action to pull an opponent’s hair with excessive force and/or brutality”. A yellow card will be issued if it is adjudged to be without excessive force or brutality.
Last campaign, Wolverhampton Wanderers striker Tolu Arokodare, currently on loan at Ajax, was at the centre of two hair-pulling incidents. In January, Everton centre-back Michael Keane was sent off after grabbing at Arokodare’s hair while challenging for a header, while Sunderland’s Dan Ballard received his marching orders after being adjudged to have pulled the Nigerian’s hair as he attempted to control an aerial ball.
In April, Manchester United head coach Michael Carrick criticised referee Paul Tierney’s sending of Lisandro Martinez for a hair pull on Dominic Calvert-Lewin as a “shocking decision”.
Gambling sponsors ban
The 2026-27 season will mark the first campaign where clubs are prohibited from agreeing front-of-shirt sponsorship deals with gambling companies.
In 2023, all 20 then-Premier League clubs “collectively agreed to withdraw gambling sponsorship from the front of clubs’ matchday shirts, becoming the first sports league in the UK to take such a measure voluntarily in order to reduce gambling advertising”.
Eleven teams — Aston Villa, Bournemouth, Brentford, Burnley, Crystal Palace, Everton, Fulham, Nottingham Forest, Sunderland, West Ham United and Wolverhampton Wanderers — had the names of gambling firms on their shirts last season.
Villa had a front-of-shirt deal with Betano for the previous two seasons (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)
While West Ham and Wolves have been able to maintain betting sponsors following their relegation to the Championship, eight of the remaining clubs have signed new deals with other companies, with Sunderland set to begin the season without a front-of-shirt sponsor.
Financial services are now the most popular industry for sponsorship agreements, with Brighton & Hove Albion, Coventry City, Everton, Forest, Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur all partnered with firms in the sector.
Betting sponsors have not been totally eliminated, however. While gambling companies can no longer have their names splashed across the most premium piece of real estate on a club’s shirt, they are allowed to be displayed on the sleeves. Aston Villa and Everton have moved their previous front-of-shirt sponsors, Betano and Stake respectively, to their sleeves of their kits, while Bournemouth have partnered with online casino Mr Q.
Clubs are also still permitted to display gambling sponsors on their training attire, with The Athletic exclusively reporting in May that United were in advanced talks with Betway. The deal was confirmed earlier this month, with sources with knowledge of the deal, not authorised to discuss details publicly, estimating the Betway partnership would be worth in excess of £18million.
A longer international break
If you’re a supporter who loathes the international break interrupting your club’s start to the campaign — good news! There will be one fewer interruption to the domestic calendar this season.
The bad news for any break-haters is that the second international window will mean that there is no Premier League football (or European club competition) for just under three weeks.
For competitions such as the Premier League that run from July or August until May, there are normally four international breaks in a league season. Three before the end of the calendar year in September, October and November before a constant stream of club football until March.
This season however, September and October’s windows have been combined into one break, with national teams now permitted to play a maximum of four matches instead of two. In Europe, teams will play the first four games of their 2026-27 UEFA Nations League campaigns over this period.
England will host Spain in their first Nations League game on September 26 (Ina Fassbender/AFP via Getty Images)
Fulham vs. Manchester United on Sunday September 20 will be the last game before the window begins the following day. It will run until Tuesday, October 6.
This merging of the two windows, which was agreed at a March 2023 meeting of the FIFA Council, will be in place until at least 2030.
The international breaks in November and March will still see the standard two matches played over the course of a week.
Is anything coming back?
These aren’t technically new, but there are a couple of Premier League staples returning after short absences.
Friday, December 26, 2025 marked the first Boxing Day without a packed slate of top-flight fixtures since 1976, with Manchester United’s 1-0 win over Newcastle United the only game staged on that day. This was due to the league’s obligation under its broadcasting agreements to hold 33 rounds of weekend games (alongside five weeks of midweek rounds), meaning that only one game can be held on a Friday in those rounds.
While the EFL and the National League both held games on Boxing Day, last year was a major break from tradition for the Premier League, leaving fans disappointed fans. 1948, 1954, 1965, 1971 and 1976 are the only years to have seen no Boxing Day action at all.
This year however, Boxing Day falls on a Saturday, which spiritually feels right for the Premier League. All fixtures in Gameweek 17 are currently slated for December 26, with kick-off times to be confirmed in due course and some games expected to be moved to the Sunday (or Monday, which will be a bank holiday) to round out the weekend.
September 1 will also mark the return of the 11pm transfer window deadline.
Both this year’s winter window and last summer’s window closed at 7pm in a departure from the usual time of an hour before midnight. The change was made after agreement between the Premier League, EFL and FA in an attempt to provide club staff with a more normal working pattern.
Both windows will once again slam shut at 11pm this season, giving clubs back their previously lost four hours.
Liverpool striker Alexander Isak was a deadline day arrival last summer (Stu Forster/Getty Images)
Another famous feature of deadline day will be sticking around, giving any resourceful, desperate or dithering (you decide) clubs the chance to complete any last-minute deals beyond the official close of the window.
If a transfer is at risk of not being completed in time, clubs can submit what is known as a dealsheet no more than two hours before the deadline. This gives them an extra two hours to finalise the deal, meaning that the actual cut-off point this year is 1am on September 2, providing that the relevant paperwork is correctly submitted.
