When will the double gameweeks hit in 2026-27?

Every summer someone asks when the doubles are coming, and the honest answer is always the same: nobody knows yet, because the cup draws haven't happened and the broadcasters haven't made their picks. What you can do is take the cup dates, which are fixed, lay them against the published Premier League calendar, and see where the two collide.

Do that for this season and one thing jumps out: the FA Cup quarter-finals won't cause a blank gameweek, because the league never put a round on that weekend in the first place.

For anyone who needs the refresher: when a Premier League club reaches an FA Cup or Carabao Cup round that falls on a league weekend, their league game gets postponed — a blank for that club — and still has to be played before the final day. Because clubs in Europe can’t use European midweeks for catch-up fixtures, the rearranged games get shoved into the few free midweeks left in April and May, and those weeks become the doubles.

Nine English clubs in Europe

England has a fifth Champions League place this season, which puts nine Premier League clubs in UEFA competition. That’s a lot of midweek football for the schedulers to work around, and the further those sides go, the fewer free midweeks remain for postponed league games.

The league phase runs from September to late January (Champions League done by 27 January; Europa and Conference the day after), with the knockouts following — play-offs in mid-to-late February, the last 16 in March, quarter-finals in early April, semis from late April into early May. For as long as an English club stays alive in Europe, none of those midweeks can hold a rearranged league game for them.

Why the squeeze only arrives in spring

The Premier League has five midweek rounds this season — 2 December (GW13), 30 December (GW18), 6 January (GW20), 10 February (GW25) and 3 March (GW28) — and every one of them sits in a gap between European matchdays. The first half of the season is built to avoid congestion, which is why it rarely causes FPL managers any trouble.

The bit that changes the usual advice comes from listing the weekends with no Premier League round at all. A pattern falls out immediately.

The league has cleared every FA Cup weekend up to and including the quarter-finals before a ball has been kicked. With no league round scheduled on any of them, there's nothing to postpone and so nothing to blank. The often-repeated idea that the quarter-final weekend brings the season's big blank simply doesn't apply to this calendar.

The first FA Cup round that costs anyone a league fixture is the semi-final, because that's the first one the league didn't schedule around.

The key dates

Treat the table below as a rough map rather than a fixture list. Orange rows are the weeks most likely to contain blanks, blue rows the likely landing spots for doubles, and the rest is the context that builds the backlog before spring arrives.

The gameweek numbers are read straight off the published fixture list rather than estimated: GW30 is Saturday 20 March, GW33 is Saturday 24 April, GW38 is Sunday 30 May. They'll only move if the broadcasters move them.

The blank weeks

There are only two, and both are on the small side. The Carabao Cup final falls on Sunday 21 March, with GW30 the day before, so whichever two clubs reach Wembley lose that league game. Nobody else is affected.

The FA Cup semi-finals occupy the weekend of 24-25 April, colliding with GW33 on Saturday 24 April and costing four clubs their fixture. Since the semi-final is the one FA Cup round the league didn't schedule around, this is the nearest thing to a proper blank gameweek the season has.

Two clubs in GW30 and four in GW33 makes for a mild year by recent standards, so if you were planning a Free Hit around some enormous spring blank, this calendar isn't going to hand you one.

The double weeks

Six postponed fixtures need replaying and there's plenty of room for them, with six free midweeks between GW31 on 10 April and the final day. The two Carabao games can go back in almost immediately, around 13-14 or 20-21 April, which points to a small double in GW31 or GW32.

The four FA Cup semi-final games are trickier to place: they can't happen before 24 April, and the fortnight after that is taken up by European semi-finals. They get pushed to the midweeks of 11-12 or 18-19 May as a result, which is why GW35 through GW37 is the likeliest home for the run-in doubles — and why clubs still alive in Europe are the ones most likely to end up playing twice in a week.

What to do with your chips

There's no need to settle on chip weeks in July. The aim at this stage is simply to avoid painting yourself into a corner — and to remember that a second set of chips arrives before any of this part of the calendar does.

• Don't hoard a Free Hit for a big spring blank, because there isn't one: six clubs miss a fixture all season, split across two gameweeks. Playing it in GW33 covers four of them, which is fine — just far short of the chip-defining week people are expecting.
• The second Bench Boost and Triple Captain want a double, and GW35 to GW37 is where the bulk of the rearranged games should land.
• Keep an eye on the nine European clubs, whose players are the most likely to pick up extra fixtures when the rearranged games go in.
• The date to recheck is the FA Cup semi-final draw in March. It's that draw, not the quarter-final one, that decides who blanks in GW33.

Gameweek dates are read from the published 2026-27 fixture list held on this site: 380 fixtures, GW1 on Friday 21 August 2026, GW38 on Sunday 30 May 2027, with the five midweek rounds in GW13, GW18, GW20, GW25 and GW28 and a nineteen-day break between GW5 and GW6. Cup and European round dates are as published, and the nine English clubs in Europe are confirmed. Which clubs end up blanking and doubling cannot be known until the draws are made.