Fantasy EFL

Fantasy EFL 25/26: What’s new and which rules have changed?

5 July 2025 17 comments
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Fantasy EFL 25/26 is officially live – and now it’s time to get familiar with the key rule changes that could impact managers.

A comprehensive strategy guide, alongside plenty of other articles, is in the works, ahead of the new season.

For now, this is an immediate deep-dive into some of the new rules and updates, and our initial thoughts on how they could shape our seasons.

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GOALKEEPER UPDATES

Fantasy EFL: The 200-point club 2

While seeing a goalkeeper score is a rare event, it’s a Fantasy manager’s ultimate dream.

Goal-scoring keepers were a no-show last season, but this year, if a keeper finds the net, they’ll snag an extra 10 points.

Assists from keepers, while more common, will continue to return three points. Last season, Leyton Orient’s Josh Keeley (G), on loan from Spurs, did score against Oldham Athletic in the FA Cup, but unfortunately, cup goals don’t count towards league Fantasy points.

The last time a ‘keeper scored in an EFL match was Ben Wilson (G) for Coventry vs Blackburn in April 2023.

Speaking of scoring, goalkeepers are also getting a significant upgrade for penalty saves!

Instead of the previous three points, keepers will now bag five points for every stop from the spot.

Many of you will remember James Trafford’s (G) heroic performance for Burnley, where he made two penalty saves from Sunderland’s Wilson Isidor (G).

Under the new rules, those two saves alone would have earned the number one an impressive 10 points.

Last season, Grimsby Town’s Jordan Wright (G), now at Newport County, made three penalty saves, the most in the EFL.

OWN-GOALS

Fantasy EFL Gameweek 13: Best of the contribution points

This season, players who score an own goal will be penalised three points (-3). While this rule primarily impacts defenders, it applies to all positions.

Unlike last year, where own goals might have gone unpunished, this year there’s a clear deduction. Fortunately, no player stood out for scoring multiple own goals last season, though 13 players did score two (such as Ben Gibson (D)).

Across the entire EFL last season, a total of 120 players scored own goals. While this number might seem high, it only works out at roughly three a Gameweek.

The inclusion of these minus points felt inevitable, unfortunately.

CLEARANCE POINTS

Fantasy EFL Captaincy Poll: Double Gameweek 30 2

Moving on, clearance points have been slightly nerfed. Last season, every three clearances resulted in one point. Whereas in 2025/26, it’s every four clearances for a point.

Anthony O’Connor (D) of Harrogate Town made 468 in 45 appearances, making up 156 of his 295 points. Despite keeping just 10 shutouts in 45, this aided the centre-back in a monster tally for a mediocre defence.

However, if that was this season, the number 15 would’ve only been rewarded with 117 points.

While a defender racking up 20+ clearances in multiple games is certainly impressive, it doesn’t hold the same allure it once did in Fantasy EFL. The meta has shifted, and with it, our focus has moved slightly away from pure clearance volume.

That said, we’re still ready to crown the clearance kings, including Shrewsbury’s Sam Stubbs (D) or Blackpool’s Oliver Casey (D).

MIDFIELDERS / FORWARDS

Fantasy EFL Double Gameweek 30: Scout Squad

Last season, very infrequently did managers opt for a 2-2-2, given the lack of routes to points for forwards. This, however, is all about to change.

Last season, forwards could only score points through two every key passes (+1), every two shots on target [SoT] (+1), and goals scored (+5).

Instead, this season, every SoT for both midfielders and forwards results in one point, which boosts their appeal.

Michael Cheek (F) took 48 shots on target in the previous campaign. Notts County’s Alassana Jatta (F) registered 45, the same as Stockport County’s Kyle Wootton (F).

However, in reality, the appeal of midfielders is boosted tenfold. Players like Davis Keillor-Dunn (M), who is listed as a midfielder, is featuring up front for Barnsley at present. He landed 43 SoT for the Tykes, while Doncaster Rovers’ Luke Molyneux (M) clocked up 39.

A 1-2-3-1 formation is therefore back on the table. Midfielders, unlike forwards who are all about scoring, have so many more ways to rack up points since they contribute at both ends of the pitch.

Still, you can guarantee the 1-3-2-1 formation will always have its fans.

CLUB POINTS

Having two club picks gives Fantasy EFL a unique feel, and can literally make or break your Gameweek.

Last season, home teams had a maximum of nine points up for grabs, while away sides could score 11. This season, the parameters have changed.

Home teams can score a maximum of 11 points, while away teams can earn up to 13. This means that, in rare cases, you could achieve a remarkable 26 points from club picks alone!

All existing rules apply, with one key change for goals scored: two extra points will now be awarded for 4+ goals, in addition to the two points already given for 2+ goals.

Early in the season, many managers focused on away clubs, chasing high scores. However, given the unsurprising prevalence of home wins, strong away club performances were rarer and more valuable.

Ironically, we had 13 results which would’ve seen managers score 13 points:

  • Leeds United won 0-4 (A) at Watford in February
  • Huddersfield Town won 0-4 (A) at Bolton in September
  • Wigan Athletic won 0-4 (A) at Bristol Rovers in September
  • Wycombe Wanderers won 0-5 (A) at Stockport in November
  • Charlton Athletic beat Northampton Town 0-5 (A) in December
  • Crawley beat Rotherham 0-4 (A) in March
  • Northampton beat P’boro 0-4 (A) in April
  • Charlton beat Wycombe 0-4 (A) in April
  • Chesterfield beat Crewe 0-5 (A) in August
  • Walsall beat Swindon 0-4 (A) in August
  • Chesterfield beat Salford 0-4 (A) in March
  • Swindon beat Fleetwood (A) 0-4 in April
  • Swindon beat Grimsby (A) 0-4 in April

There were multiple occasions when clubs would’ve scored 11 points for the 4-0+ home wins, including Leeds United’s 7-0 victory over Cardiff City in February.

The difference between a decent mini-league finish and a winning one might just come down to prioritising free-scoring clubs with solid defences. Don’t go heavy on away sides early on, but don’t only opt for home teams. Every point counts!

NEW CHIP

New for 2025/26, the One Club chip allows you, for one Gameweek only, to select as many players as you like from one club, bypassing the usual two-club limit. This chip can be used at any point throughout the season.

You can only apply your One Club chip before the Gameweek kicks off and you can reset it any time before the first fixture begins.

Unlike the Max Captain, which is available twice per season, the One Club chip is available just once.

NO TRIPLE GAMEWEEKS… YET

Not a rule change as such but still worth noting!

Last season, we had the joy of a festive Triple Gameweek between Boxing Day and New Year’s Day.

Fantasy EFL: Gameweek 19 Scout Notes

This year, Boxing Day falls on a Friday, making a Triple Gameweek unfeasible with the current schedule.

However, don’t completely rule out one happening later in the campaign.

Last season saw a significant increase in fixture congestion compared to initial projections. We started with 10 Double Gameweeks and just one Triple Gameweek. However, due to postponements, this ballooned to 19 Double Gameweeks and two Triple Gameweeks (the latter just for Birmingham) by the season’s end.

Looking ahead to the upcoming campaign, we’ve already got 16 Double Gameweeks scheduled. The first of these will occur in Gameweek 3, when League One and League Two teams are scheduled to play twice between Saturday and Wednesday.

Given how many rearrangements we had last season due to weather and other mitigating factors, including a power failure at Fratton Park, 16 is likely to end up being a lot more!

PLAN AHEAD

The final key change to note, and one that is music to the ears of all managers, is that we can now create our teams for the next Gameweek, ahead of the current Gameweek!

Once Gameweek 1 kicks off, for example, managers can already begin planning for Gameweek 2.

It’s a necessary and well-appreciated move from the EFL.

All in all, positive changes. The season countdown is on!

Fantasy EFL 2025/26: 72 of the best and funniest team names
17 Comments Login to Post a Comment
  1. FPL Virgin
    • Fantasy Football Scout Member
    • 9 Years
    14 days, 1 hour ago

    "We’ll get a total of three Gameweeks before our first international break in September."

    This really grinds my gears. 😡

    Just get rid of all international breaks, finish the season earlier, and therefore create more time for international football after the season has finished.

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    1. TorresMagic™
      • Fantasy Football Scout Member
      • Has Moderation Rights
      • 16 Years
      14 days, 1 hour ago

      Love the breaks.

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      1. FPL Virgin
        • Fantasy Football Scout Member
        • 9 Years
        14 days, 39 mins ago

        Do you work for Kit Kat?

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        1. TorresMagic™
          • Fantasy Football Scout Member
          • Has Moderation Rights
          • 16 Years
          14 days, 37 mins ago

          Have a break.

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    2. CONNERS
      • 6 Years
      13 days, 21 hours ago

      You tend to enjoy the IB more if you had a good last GW.

      Not so much if you're stuck staring at your 40 pointer for 2 weeks.

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  2. Could FPL take a leaf out of CWC Fantasy's book?
    riot
    • Fantasy Football Scout Member
    • 14 Years
    13 days, 23 hours ago

    I'm sure it's been said before, but CWC fantasy had a few nice rule changes compared to FPL that I hope Mark and Towers have paid attention to.

    (I didn't watch the tournament and think it's bad, just casually played the game)

    1. Differentials under 5% owned getting +2 points if they score decently (5 or 6 points I think)

    - Really fun rule. Dead teams in FPL might limit it slightly, but as a fan of keeping FPL as simple as possible I think it would still work including overall ownership.

    - This could also work as a pseudo-boost for defensive midfielders. I'd rather this than add tackles or categorise them differently.

    2. Defenders get 5 for a CS and 7 for a goal.

    - Pretty straightforward. I probably wouldn't add both, I think the +1 CS point is better to make central defenders slightly more appealing. Of course this also benefits attacking defenders, but it raises the floor for defenders which makes attacking ones veryslightly less attractive, while benefiting the position as a whole.

    3. Maximum Captain chip (highest scorer on your team automatically becomes your captain that week.

    - It's a lot better than Assistant Manager, which is surely being scrapped. Wouldn't mind it as a replacement. I could see this encouraging some slightly riskier picks in DGWS. Let me give a Liverpool DGW last season for example:

    - No chip: Salah (c), TAA, VVD. All great picks with high floors and ceilings. Salah an easy captain choice.

    - Max Cap chip: Salah, Diaz, Szoboszlai. Hoping for no cleansheets, instead having 3 attackers with very high ceilings. Not punished if Salah delivers, but big gains if one of the other two goes crazy.

    More optimistic than I've been for FPL in a long time this year. I was concerned it'd get more bloated with rule changes and AM was a terrible chip in so many ways. Anyone else have thoughts on the CWC stuff and if it'd be good for FPL?

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    1. riot
      • Fantasy Football Scout Member
      • 14 Years
      13 days, 23 hours ago

      I also wouldn't mind a chip that can't be used in a DGW week (or just a DGW player), to encourage a bit more variety. While the classic 'I'm going to be using all my chips roughly between GW24 and GW36' has been a standard GW1 consideration for a decade, I think it'd be interesting to shake this up.

      One thing I will say is that this would slightly reduce the rewards of planning ahead by experienced players, although it would only be one chip. Honestly, though, I think that ship has sailed completely.

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      1. riot
        • Fantasy Football Scout Member
        • 14 Years
        13 days, 22 hours ago

        I had Maximum Captain in mind for this SGW chip, to be honest. It can definitely be seen as a 'lower skill' chip to use and limiting it to SGWs could be cool.

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    2. CarsonYeung
      • 12 Years
      13 days, 22 hours ago

      Max Captain is definitely viable as a chip but is it too similar to Triple Captain? Probably has to be one or the other. Agree that AM should be scrapped.

      I'd be reluctant to make changes to allocation of points and add in new ways to earn them. FPL's formula is simple, easy to understand and it works. Let the shorter, tournament format games innovate with this kind of thing. I think that over a long season it would quickly become tiresome trying to accommodate the 5% differential gimmick every week.

      The real enemy of FPL is the template and a big driver of template is DGWs, ideally we need far fewer of them. With changes to the domestic cups last year we should have had fewer but the Merseyside derby suspension gave already popular teams Liverpool and Villa a free double going into 'chip season', which really didn't help.

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      1. riot
        • Fantasy Football Scout Member
        • 14 Years
        13 days, 22 hours ago

        I do agree that FPL works and I'm a longtime admirer of its simplicity. Positions becoming more fluid is something I'm not sure the game has really adapted to yet, though.

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        1. CarsonYeung
          • 12 Years
          13 days, 22 hours ago

          Classification of mids/forwards has been an issue for years, in my opinion players like Salah should have been forwards a long time ago, they seem hell bent on classifying as many of them as midfielders as possible. They put Aubameyang as a midfielder one year which is objectively hilarious. Creates a needless scarcity of striker options which harms the game.

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          1. Kingy109
            • 4 Years
            13 days, 21 hours ago

            Problem with doing that is you only have 3 forward slots and this change means too many options of players like Salah (basically any wingers) who are now forwards to fill those slots. Amost all of the popular mids at loads of price points - Mbeumo, Saka, Gordon, Murphy, Rogers, Bowen, Eze, Semenyo etc. would presumably all need to be forwards too. And you'd have to pick 5 midfielders still from a pretty unispiring pool of what is left. Would need I think a change in squad numbers to compensate with fewer mids and more forwards (say 4 of each) and a 3-3-4 formation.

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            1. CONNERS
              • 6 Years
              13 days, 21 hours ago

              It would work if they adjusted the scoring system for defensive / central mids in order to make them viable picks.

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            2. CarsonYeung
              • 12 Years
              13 days, 19 hours ago

              Tbh my solution for this wouldn't be an exact science, but of the ones you listed there instinctively I'd have no problem having Salah and Mbeumo as forwards, maybe Bowen as well. It's hard to explain but if you're the main goalscorer of the team, on pens, doing zero defensive work there's a case to be made.

              My main gripe is the amount of teams with zero viable forwards. Liverpool - Darwin not playing, zero striker options. Arsenal - zero options post Havertz injury. West Ham - ditto. What's a bigger problem for the game, an inconsistency between Bowen and Semenyo (random example) or having the most productive teams for FPL with no forwards? When teams actually have more than 1 viable option (Wolves - Cunha and Strand Larsen, Man City - Haaland, Marmoush) it creates decisions and variation

              When the game launches and you look at the strikers list you know that barely halfway down page 1 you're already looking at complete dross

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      2. TallestJohn
        • 8 Years
        13 days, 20 hours ago

        I think Max and Triple are quite different. Triple is very simple concept, basically the same as normal captaincy but as soon as we know the fixtures you can start looking for the best opportunity to use it. Most of the time this will be a premium attacker in a DGW. It probably has to be a truly exceptional fixture to use it in a single GW unless you hold it too long and have to play it in the last couple of weeks.

        Last season it would've been a waste to use Max in the weeks where the only teams to double were Liverpool and Everton or Villa because you'd make no gain on people who just captained Salah (and lost ground to those who used TC). The only benefit in that scenario would be that it mitigates against hypothetical injury.

        Based on last season 6x2 would've been my floor for Max in any GW and there were about four occasions when my captain blanked and another player in my XI scored double figures. The best week to use it would've been GW6 when I captained Håland against Newcastle while Palmer scored four against Brighton. Max's main problem, similar to Bench Boost, is that it's sort of designed to be played when you don't know when to play it and inherently involves second guessing yourself.

        I played Fantasy EFL last season which had two Max Captains during the season. It's quite different as there are numerous very large DGWs (and even some triple GWs) and you can pick any seven players from a pool of thousands each week.

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    3. ᶠᶦˡᵗʰʸLucre $$$
      • 10 Years
      13 days, 20 hours ago

      No, no and no.

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    4. Baines on Toast...
      • Fantasy Football Scout Member
      • 14 Years
      11 days, 2 hours ago

      The problem with the differential bonus is there's two tiers of template - overall ownership and the drones who follow YouTubers / LiveFPL etc.

      Really we need a bonus for players not used by active managers in those cohorts.

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