What's New in Fantasy Premier League 2025/26 - Recap

Fantasy Premier League is back for the 2025/26 season, and it comes with a host of changes that could shake up how managers build their squads. From revamped bonus point scoring to defensive contributions finally being recognised, here's a full breakdown of everything new in FPL this year.

1. Defensive Contributions

For a while now, attacking threat has been the main consideration when building your team. The aim of Defensive Contributions is to try to help more defensive-minded players stand out. Players like centre-backs and defensive midfielders are often overlooked as very rarely do they bring anything to the attack. This year, players are rewarded for protecting their own penalty box.

For Defenders, any defender who has reached a total of 10 clearances, blocks, interceptions or tackles (abbreviated to CBIT) will earn 2 points. However if they were to reach 20, this would not then award the player 4 points.

For midfielders and forwards, there is one extra component. To recognise the work midfielders and forwards put in pressing and turning defence into attack, they get extra rewards that defenders don't. Whilst they still get points for clearances, blocks, interceptions and tackles, they are also rewarded for recoveries (abbreviated to CBIRT for these position).

Because midfielders and forwards benefit more from recoveries, they require 12 defensive contributions to secure 2 points.

2. Bonus Points System

In previous seasons, the Bonus Points System (BPS) worked as follows:

• If there is a tie for first place, players 1 & 2 will receive 3 points each and player 3 will receive 1 point.

• If there is a tie for second place, player 1 will receive 3 points and players 2 & 3 will receive 2 points each.

• If there is a tie for third place, player 1 will receive 3 points, player 2 will receive 2 points and players 3 & 4 will receive 1 point each.

For this season's game, the following changes have been made:

Goalkeeper saves - previously, goalkeepers would earn 2 points for every save made. However this season, the location of the shot will determine the amount of points they earn. A goalkeeper will now earn 3 in the BPS if the shot was taken inside the penalty area or 2 if it was taken outside the box.

Penalty saves this year drop from 9 points to 8, hence the extra point for saving a shot inside the box.

Penalty Goals - a new 'penalty goals scored' metric has been introduced to differentiate from other goals scored. Any player will earn 12 points in the BPS for scoring a penalty. In previous seasons, forwards scored 24, midfielders scored 18 and defenders scored 12 for converting a penalty.

Those numbers still apply for all regular goals.

Successful Tackles - this season, players will earn two points for each tackle won. In previous seasons, 2 points were awarded for the total of tackles won - tackles lost.

3. Extra Transfers for AFCON

This season, to recognise the impact AFCON can have on managers' teams, they are given 5 free transfers to ensure players who are unavailable due to the tournament are able to be transferred out with no consequence. From a fantasy perspective, AFCON covers gameweeks 17-22, so that will be when these free transfers will be in play.

4. Two Sets of Chips

In previous seasons, managers were given 2 wildcards to use. One in the first half of the season, one in the second. This season, this applies to all the chips. Additionally, the assistant manager chip has been scrapped after only one season's use.

5. Changes to Assists Rules

Fantasy assists are often awarded to the player on the goalscoring team who got the final touch before the goal, and they are awarded 3 FPL points. Until this season, players have not been awarded if their pass or cross was deflected by an opponent away from the intended target. So this season this will no longer matter and a fantasy assist will be awarded if the following two criteria are fulfilled:

• The goalscorer receives the ball inside the penalty box

• There is only one defensive touch before the goal reaches the goalscorer.

If these rules were in place last season, there would have been 41 more fantasy assists awarded.