Which team will win the Championship play-offs in 2025-26? We assess the four Championship play-off contenders for 2025-26 and their chances of securing the final Premier League place, using Opta supercomputer predictions.
Millwall vs Hull City. Middlesbrough vs Southampton. Four teams. Two ties. One aim: to reach the so-called promised land of the Premier League.
As we (the neutrals, at least) prepare to enjoy the drama only the EFL play-offs can produce, we run the rule over the contenders and assess who will win the Championship play-offs in 2025-26.
Millwall
For a while, it looked like Millwall might secure automatic promotion to earn their first ever taste of Premier League action, but they frustratingly missed out to Ipswich Town by just a point after the final matchday of action on Saturday.
Millwall have only ever previously spent two seasons in the English top flight, winning the Division Two title in 1987-88 before finishing 10th in their debut top-flight campaign the following season. But they were relegated in last place the season after (1989-90) and haven’t returned since.
That could change in 2026, though. The Lions face Hull City away from home in the semi-final first leg on Friday night, but travelling hasn’t been an issue for them in 2025-26.
Millwall won more points away from home than any other team in the Championship this season (41) and they lost just four of their 23 away games overall. One of their away wins came at Hull in March (3-1) after losing to the Tigers at home by the same scoreline three months earlier.
The south London club have a mixed history in the play-offs. They’ve reached the final in each of their last four Football League play-off appearances, with all of these coming in League One (2008-09, 2009-10, 2015-16, 2016-17). But on the flip side, they’ve gone out in the semi-finals in all three of their second-tier play-off campaigns (1990-91, 1993-94, 2001-02).
The good news for Millwall is that the team finishing the regular season in third place has both reached the final (17 times) and won promotion via the play-offs to the Premier League (9 times) more often than any other league position since the Championship rebrand in 2004-05.
Millwall will come up against another of the more direct sides in the Championship this season when they face Hull in the semis. Only Oxford United and Charlton Athletic (both 21%) played a higher proportion of their passes long than both Millwall and Hull did in 2025-26 (19%).
Femi Azeez will undoubtedly be Millwall’s key player in the play-offs, finishing the regular season as both their league top scorer (11) and assister (7). Azeez is one of just two players to both score 5+ goals (5) and provide 5+ assists (6) in the Championship in 2026, along with Jack Rudoni.
Hull City
Hull City have the opportunity to make their way back to the Premier League after a nine-year absence.
They pushed past Wrexham and into the play-offs on the final day of the season. They beat Norwich 2-1 after coming from a goal behind, with Oliver McBurnie the hero as he scored a brace.
McBurnie has been their main goal threat all season, scoring four goals in his last five games, while he’s two goals away from becoming the first Hull player to score 20 in all competitions in a season since Mallik Wilks in 2020-21 (22). In the Championship alone, only Swansea’s Zan Vipotnik (23) scored more than McBurnie (17).
Statistically, they were the biggest overachievers in the 2025-26 campaign, securing 19.9 points more than their expected points total (73 vs 53.1). Astonishingly, if the Championship season was based on expected points alone, they’d have finished 23rd.
But, luckily for Hull, their real-life performances at both ends of the pitch played out differently.
Hull’s opponents tallied 75.5 xG from non-penalty situations in total but the Tigers conceded just 62 times from such situations this season in the Championship. That meant that their defensive overperformance of +13.5 compared to the chances they gave up was the biggest in 2025-26.
It was a similar story going forward, too. Only Wrexham (+12.4) had a higher over-performance of non-penalty xG in the Championship this season than Hull (+10.3).
Hull ended up winning 73 points while finishing sixth in the table. The last team to win promotion to the Premier League while winning as few points in the regular season were Crystal Palace in 2012-13 (72), after they defeated Watford in the play-off final.
Since the Championship rebrand in 2004-05, only two teams to finish sixth in the regular season have gone on to win promotion to the Premier League via the play-offs – fewer than any other position. Hull will hope to replicate the feats of both West Ham in 2004-05 and Blackpool in 2009-10, who both managed to do just that.
Southampton
Southampton were the best-performing Championship team following Tonda Eckert’s appointment on 2 November, initially on an interim basis to replace the outgoing Will Still.
Since his first game in charge on 5 November 2025, Saints collected more points than any other team (68) and they also came close to reaching the FA Cup final, losing to Manchester City with two late goals in the semi-final last month.
They also scored 11 goals more than any other team in the Championship (69) since Eckert’s first game, and they were by far the most clinical team in the division over that period, too, converting 14.4% of their shots.
One player who’s thrived under Eckert is 27-year-old forward Léo Scienza, who has been involved in 16 goals (6 goals, 10 assists) in 29 games under the German coach. Only Sheffield United’s Gustavo Hamer (11) has assisted more goals in the league than Scienza in that period.
So poor was Southampton’s start to the season – they were fourth from bottom after 13 matches, when Still was sacked – that they only spent 49 days inside the Championship top six this season, a tally that even Leicester City (59) bettered, despite being relegated.
They come into the play-offs unbeaten in their final 19 Championship games (W14 D5). Only in 2023-24 have they had a longer run without defeat in the league (22), eventually getting promoted via the play-offs in that campaign.
Finishing fourth might prove to be a good omen, too. The team finishing fourth has won promotion in three of the last four Championship seasons, including Southampton themselves in 2023-24 against Leeds United.
One thing that might work against them is their form in the biggest league games across 2025-26. In 10 matches against the other sides to finish in the top six this season, Southampton won just once and secured only eight points (W1 D5 L4) – the worst record of any side in a top-six mini-league.
Middlesbrough
Middlesbrough will be hopeful of making it through the play-offs and ending an eight-season spell as a Championship club. They may consider themselves unfortunate to not already be celebrating promotion to the Premier League.
Boro may have finished fifth behind Southampton and Millwall, and four points off second-placed Ipswich Town, but they spent a joint-high number of days in the top two places in the table alongside Coventry City (217). Ipswich stole in at the last, finishing the season having spent just 28 days inside the top two – fewer than 17th place Stoke City (43).
Middlesbrough had an incredible record of holding onto leads in Championship games before drawing against Bristol City on 14 March. Before that game, they’d won all 20 league games in which they’d led across 2025-26, but across their final nine games, they dropped 11 points from winning positions.
Boro had to deal with losing Rob Edwards in November, too. Attracted to the proposition of managing one of the clubs he had played for, Wolves, he left less than five months after coming into the club as boss. His replacement, Kim Hellberg, has done a decent enough job, however.
Since the Swede’s first game in charge on 29 November, Middlesbrough won 50 points – the sixth-best tally, but only seven fewer than the best (Ipswich, 57 points). Their points-per-game average under Hellberg (1.72) was actually lower than it was in 2025-26 before his arrival (1.76), though.
Under Hellberg, Middlesbrough have had the highest possession in the Championship (62.8%) and averaged 51 more successful passes per game (459) than any other side. Second in both categories is Southampton, who they face in the play-off semis.
Historically, Boro haven’t had the best record in EFL play-offs. They were promoted to the top flight via the play-offs in the second ever season they came into play (1987-88), beating Chelsea over two legs, but since then, they’ve been in the second-tier play-offs four times without success, reaching the final only once (2014-15), where they lost to Norwich City at Wembley.
Who Will Win the Championship Play-Offs?
The Opta supercomputer has been hard at work crunching the data to predict who is best placed to win promotion to the Premier League, and it makes Southampton the favourites to win promotion back to the top flight at the first time of asking.
Saints made it to the final across 58.8% of the supercomputer’s 10,000 simulations and won the play-offs 32.9% of the time.
Millwall are the only one of the four play-off contenders to have never played in the Premier League since its inaugural season in 1992-93, but they are the supercomputer’s second favourites. They progressed past Hull City in the semi-finals 61.6% of the time and went on to win the final in 29.7% of sims.
The ‘outsiders’ in both semi-final ties are Middlesbrough and Hull, with both teams reaching the final in fewer than 42% of the simulations.
Middlesbrough defeated Southampton over two legs in 41.2% of the simulations and are deemed more likely to reach Wembley than Hull, who knocked out Millwall 38.4% of the time in the 10,000 sims.
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