Who will win the WSL? Who will secure Champions League football? And which club faces the greatest risk of the relegation play-off? Ahead of the 2025-26 campaign, the Opta supercomputer has provided a data-led forecast for the WSL season.
The 2025-26 season is a unique moment for the Women’s Super League. It marks the final campaign before the competition expands to 14 clubs in 2026-27, and with that comes a change to the format.
The club who finish bottom of the 12-team table this term will not be relegated automatically but will instead contest a play-off against the third-placed side in WSL 2. The top two from the second tier will be promoted and feature in the 2026-27 WSL season alongside the winners of that play-off to make up the expanded 14-team format.
The curtain raiser for 2025-26 comes at Stamford Bridge, where defending champions Chelsea face Manchester City.
Chelsea won their sixth consecutive title and eighth overall in 2024-25, with new coach Sonia Bompastor following ably in the footsteps of her predecessor Emma Hayes.
For the likes of Manchester City, Arsenal and Manchester United, the new season provides another opportunity to finally break Chelsea’s stranglehold at the top. But what are their chances of doing so? And how might the bottom half of the table shape up?
We can turn to the Opta supercomputer for answers, with the projection model having run 10,000 data-led simulations to forecast how the 2025-26 WSL season might turn out.
Who Will Win the WSL?
Chelsea begin the season not just as favourites, but overwhelming ones. In the Opta supercomputer’s 10,000 simulations, they won the title 72.4% of the time; given they’ve won six in a row, can you really blame it?
The Blues were utterly dominant by all measures last season. They became the first team ever to record an invincible season in a 22-game WSL campaign (W19 D3), and along the way they set all-time WSL records for total points (60) and points per game (2.73). Bompastor’s side ultimately finished 12 points clear of Arsenal, the largest margin ever recorded at the summit.
After becoming just the second manager to win the WSL title in their debut season (after Arsenal’s Laura Harvey in 2011), Bompastor is now bidding to become the first non-English manager to win multiple WSL titles. Our model gives her every chance of achieving that.
Manchester City are the closest contenders according to the Opta supercomputer, but their 13.6% chance highlights just how far the chasing pack remain behind Chelsea.
Last season was disappointing by City’s standards, with their 1.95 points per game the lowest since their inaugural WSL campaign in 2014 (1.36). Yet there were signs of recovery late on, when they lost just once across their final nine matches (W5 D3).
New head coach Andrée Jeglertz has an abundance of attacking quality to build around. Despite only playing 10 games last campaign, Lauren Hemp finished as the WSL’s top assister (8), and Khadija Shaw, back-to-back Golden Boot winner, is about as close to a guarantee of goals as you can get.
Those two will provide the cutting edge for Jeglertz’s team, who have also reinforced defensively with the additions of Austrian full-back Laura Wienroither and Canadian defender Jade Rose. Sydney Lohmann and Iman Beney are exciting options further forward.
Finishing fourth last season means City will not play European football in 2025-26. The last time that happened was back in 2023-24, when they missed out on the title by goal difference alone.
Arsenal come next, with the Opta supercomputer giving them a 10.1% chance of the title. The Gunners enter the season buoyed by European glory after winning the Champions League last campaign.
Domestically, they were the WSL’s most prolific scorers in 2024-25, netting 62 times with goals coming from 15 different players.
The headline arrival of Olivia Smith gives them yet more attacking firepower. Signed from Liverpool for what at the time was a world-record £1 million fee, Smith represents the most expensive transfer between two WSL clubs. Still just 20, she is seen as one of the game’s brightest talents and her signing is a real statement of intent from a side who are looking to win the domestic title for the first time in six years.
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2 months ago Louise BawdenWho Will Qualify for the Champions League?
While the WSL’s impending expansion has changed the relegation format this season, the rules for Champions League qualifying remain unchanged: the top two sides qualify directly for the league phase, while third must navigate the final qualifying round.
Unsurprisingly, the supercomputer leans heavily towards Chelsea (98.2%), Manchester City (79.0%) and Arsenal (72.4%) securing those slots.
With a 46.7% chance of cracking the top three, Manchester United look best placed to disrupt the established order.
United rebounded strongly from a disappointing 2023-24, finishing third last season and earning head coach Marc Skinner a contract extension. Skinner, now the fourth-most experienced manager in WSL history with 127 games in charge, has added further quality this summer.
The marquee signing is Fridolina Rolfö, recruited from Barcelona. At 31, the Swede arrives with experience of winning at the very highest level and offers tactical versatility. Whether deployed at full-back, on the wing, or pushed into more advanced central roles, she adds excellent quality to a side eager to move from challengers to contenders.
Who Will Be Relegated From the WSL in 2025-26?
At the opposite end of the spectrum, Leicester City are the team most at risk of falling into the relegation play-off, with a 25.7% probability of finishing bottom.
Last season, only Crystal Palace collected fewer points (10) than Leicester’s 20, and only Palace (20) scored fewer goals than the Foxes (21). Their inability to find the net — failing to score in eight of their opening 11 games — left them with a lot of work to do.
West Ham (15.4%), London City Lionesses (15.0%) and Brighton (14.4%) are the other sides most at risk of the drop.
While none face the certainty of automatic relegation, the spectre of the relegation play-off looms large.
What of the London City Lionesses?
The 2025-26 season also welcomes new blood.
London City Lionesses will make history as the first club promoted to the WSL without any affiliation to a men’s team.
The Opta supercomputer predicts them to finish 10th, which would represent the best performance by a promoted side since Liverpool finished seventh in 2022-23.
Opta-Simulated WSL Table
After simulating every match of the 2025-26 WSL season 10,000 times, we’re able to average the points total of every club across those simulations and rank teams positionally. Here are the Opta supercomputer results from those sims:
1st: Chelsea – 52.3 average points2nd: Manchester City – 45.03rd: Arsenal – 43.94th: Manchester United – 40.55th: Liverpool – 27.36th: Everton – 24.77th: Aston Villa – 24.58th: Tottenham Hotspur – 22.99th: Brighton & Hove Albion – 22.210th: London City Lionesses – 22.011th: West Ham United – 21.912th: Leicester City – 19.8
How Does the Opta Supercomputer Model Work?
Opta’s League Prediction model estimates the likelihood of teams finishing in each position in the competition. We can therefore see how successful a team’s season is likely to be, whether it’s their relegation or title chances. The model estimates the probability of each match outcome (win, draw or loss) by using betting market odds and Opta Power Rankings. The odds and rankings are based on historical and recent team performances. The model considers the strength of opponents by using these match outcome probabilities and simulates the remaining fixtures in the competition thousands of times. By analysing the outcome of each of these simulations, the model can see how often teams finished in each league position to create our final predictions.Subscribe to our football newsletter to receive exclusive weekly content. You should also follow our social accounts over on X, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.
WSL Predictions 2025-26: The Opta Supercomputer Projections Opta Analyst.
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