Guide · 5 min read
The shape of an FPL season
Thirty-eight gameweeks, two halves, ten monthly phases, a knockout cup and a calendar that gets stranger as it goes. Knowing the shape of the year in advance is worth more than any single transfer.
Thirty-eight gameweeks in two halves
An FPL season runs from gameweek 1 to gameweek 38, one for each round of Premier League fixtures. This season's first deadline was 21 August 2026 and the final gameweek's deadline is 30 May 2027. The game splits the season into two halves for chip purposes: gameweeks 1 to 19 and 20 to 38. Every chip comes in a first-half version and a second-half version, and the first-half set expires at the gameweek 19 deadline, this season 2 January 2027 at 13:30 UTC, whether you've used it or not.
That one date is the spine of the season. Everything in the first half is planned around using four chips well before it; everything in the second half is planned around a fresh set of four and the fixture chaos that arrives with them.
The monthly phases
The game also divides the season into phases, one per month, and every league table can be viewed by phase, so there's a September table and a December table as well as the overall one. These are this season's phase boundaries, from the game's settings.
| Phase | Gameweeks | Weeks |
|---|---|---|
| August | 1–2 | 2 |
| September | 3–5 | 3 |
| October | 6–9 | 4 |
| November | 10–12 | 3 |
| December | 13–18 | 6 |
| January | 19–23 | 5 |
| February | 24–27 | 4 |
| March | 28–30 | 3 |
| April | 31–33 | 3 |
| May | 34–38 | 5 |
Two things worth noticing. The short months, September, November, March and April, are usually the ones with an international break in them, so they're where you get a fortnight off to think. December is the longest phase at six gameweeks, packed into the shortest space, which is where rotation and injuries bite hardest and where a squad of fifteen genuine starters earns its keep. And gameweek 19, the chip deadline, is the first week of the January phase: the first-half chips run out just as the winter fixtures end.
Blanks and doubles
A gameweek normally gives every club one fixture. When matches are moved, for cup ties or other postponements, a club can have two fixtures in one gameweek or none. Early in the season this is rare, because nothing has been rearranged yet. By spring the postponements have accumulated and the rearranged matches have to be fitted in somewhere, so the second half tends to produce the double and blank gameweeks that make Bench Boost and Free Hit valuable. When to play Bench Boost and Free Hit covers how to use them, and the club pages show each club's fixtures as they stand.
The cup
The game runs a knockout cup alongside the league season. Its start gameweek, qualifying method and format are set by the game each season and published in its settings once decided; at the time of writing, this season's haven't been. Private head-to-head leagues can also add knockout rounds of their own, up to three. A cup tie is a head-to-head knockout, win and you go through, so it rewards variance in exactly the way head-to-head leagues do.
Planning the first half
The first-half chips have to go by gameweek 19, and there will probably be no double gameweek to spend them on, so plan for ordinary weeks. The Wildcard is a repair tool: play it when the team is broken, which for many managers turns out to be some time in the autumn, not on a pre-decided date. Bench Boost and Triple Captain want the strongest single week you can identify, one where your fifteen all start and your captain has the fixture you'd choose. Neither should ever reach gameweek 19 unused; a decent week beats no week.
The chips guide has the full windows. The key detail is that Wildcard and Free Hit can't be played in gameweek 1, and the other two can.
Planning the second half
The second set arrives for gameweek 20 with a fresh Wildcard, Free Hit, Bench Boost and Triple Captain, and nineteen gameweeks to spend them in. Here patience pays. The fixture rearrangements that create doubles usually become clear a few weeks in advance, and the strongest pattern is to hold the Wildcard for the week before the biggest double, build fifteen players who all play twice, Bench Boost the double, and Free Hit the blank that usually sits nearby. Triple Captain goes on the best doubling captain.
Add it up. A Bench Boost on a bench scoring 6, 4, 8 and 3 across a double is 21 points, against the 8 a normal week would give: a gain of 13. A Free Hit that fields eleven players in a blank where you'd otherwise have had six is worth around 26. A Triple Captain on a doubling captain who scores 14 adds an extra 14. That's roughly fifty points across three gameweeks, against a rival who has none of it.
The trade-off is that holding all four chips means playing a normal squad through February and March while others enjoy their Wildcard. Whether that's right depends on your league position. Leaders can afford to wait; chasers may need the chips earlier, for variance.
The run-in
May has five gameweeks, and by then the field has spread out: each point moves you fewer overall rank places than it did in September, and mini-league gaps that looked open in March have hardened. Overall rank explained covers why. The final gameweek is also the last chance for any second-half chip, the same logic as gameweek 19 with no next half to fall back on.
Every finished gameweek of this season, with its average, its top score and how many managers played each chip, is on the gameweek pages. That's the season's shape, written as it happens.