The EFL Championship

The Championship is contested by 24 clubs each season. Every club plays the other 23 twice — once at home, once away — for 46 matches in total, eight more than the Premier League's 38-game season. The schedule is one of the most demanding in football. The same three-points-for-a-win scoring system is used, and the league table at the end of the season decides promotion to the Premier League above and relegation to League One below.

The Championship occupies an unusual position in football. It is one of the best-attended leagues in world football, with average crowds above 23,000 and some of the highest aggregate attendance figures of any league. Its commercial revenue is still a small fraction of the Premier League's. The gap between the Championship and the top flight makes promotion to the Premier League a transformative outcome for a club, which is why the play-off final is famously high-stakes.

The Championship often starts slightly earlier than the Premier League. Its regular season usually finishes in early May, with the play-offs continuing later in the month. Each club plays a match almost every weekend, with midweek matches scheduled every few weeks across the season. The 46 games are heavier on clubs than the Premier League's 38, and the schedule includes occasions where clubs play three matches in eight days — particularly over the Christmas and Easter periods. The table at the end of the season decides everything that follows.

Tiebreakers for clubs level on points begin with goal difference, then goals scored, then head-to-head records between the clubs involved. If clubs still cannot be separated, the EFL regulations move through further criteria such as number of wins, away goals scored, disciplinary penalty points, serious sending-off records and, in rare cases, a deciding match. The same rules apply for promotion places, play-off places and relegation places. The Championship has rarely needed extreme tiebreakers, but in close years a single goal can decide who gets promoted, who makes the play-offs, and who drops down.

The club that finishes top of the Championship table is the league champion and is promoted to the Premier League. The second-placed club is promoted automatically as well. Under the four-team format used up to 2025-26, the remaining promotion place was decided by the Championship play-offs, a knockout between the clubs finishing third, fourth, fifth and sixth. From 2026-27, the Championship play-offs expand to six teams: third and fourth enter at the semi-final stage, while fifth plays eighth and sixth plays seventh in one-off eliminator ties. The semi-finals remain two-legged ties, followed by a single-match final at Wembley.

The Championship play-off final is often described as the most lucrative single match in football. The winner is promoted to the Premier League, gaining access to much higher broadcast, commercial and matchday income. The total value of promotion is often estimated in the hundreds of millions of pounds over several seasons, especially when parachute payments are included. The match often draws a crowd of close to 90,000 at Wembley and is one of the most-watched fixtures in English football each year.

The three clubs finishing in the bottom three positions of the Championship at the end of the season are automatically relegated to League One. There is no relegation play-off — the bottom three drop straight down. The Championship's relegation places are filled by three clubs promoted from League One the following season — the top two automatically, plus the winner of the League One play-offs.

Relegation from the Championship to League One is a significant financial blow for most clubs, although less dramatic than the gap between the Premier League and Championship. League One operates on a lower revenue base, and clubs that drop down often face restructuring of their playing squads. Clubs that fall further still — from League One to League Two, or from League Two out of the EFL altogether — can face existential pressures, and several historically major English clubs have struggled financially after extended periods in the lower divisions.

From 2026-27, the clubs finishing third to eighth in the Championship table enter the play-offs. Third and fourth go straight into the semi-finals. The clubs finishing fifth and eighth meet in one single-match eliminator tie, while sixth and seventh meet in the other. The higher-placed club hosts each eliminator.

The two eliminator winners join the third and fourth-placed clubs in two-legged semi-finals. The final is played at Wembley Stadium in late May, after the regular Championship season ends. The match is a single match — there is no second leg. The winner is promoted to the Premier League the following August. The expanded play-off system is designed to keep the Championship competitive deep into the season: a club can finish well behind the automatic promotion places and still reach the Premier League by winning the play-offs.

England's second-tier league was created in 1892 as the Football League Second Division. It expanded over the following decades into a national competition with promotion and relegation linking it to the First Division above. When the Premier League broke away from the Football League in 1992, the Second Division became the new First Division, which was rebranded as the Championship in 2004 when the Football League restructured its divisions. The competition has continued continuously through all these renamings.

Several clubs that are now Premier League regulars have spent significant time in the Championship in the modern era, and several historically big clubs have dropped into it and back up across the Premier League era. Promotion from the Championship is regularly competitive, with multiple clubs contesting the top six each year. Recent history includes clubs such as Brighton, Bournemouth and Brentford using promotion from the Championship as a platform for sustained Premier League spells, while clubs such as Burnley and Luton Town show how difficult survival after promotion can be.