The 2026-27 Championship season begins this week. We’ve analysed the schedule up to the September international break to determine which teams have the easiest and toughest starts to the new campaign.
Those with a keen eye for detail will notice that each side plays 46 matches in the Championship regular season, and yes, they do play every other team twice across 2026-27 with one meeting at home and the other away.
But there is something to be said for the scheduling and the effect it has on the potential to pick up points. Some teams are harder to play than others in the Championship, but would you rather play them early in the season and hope to catch them cold or play them later when pre-season expectations have potentially fallen by the wayside?
Of course, the Championship season (more so than others) is a marathon and not a sprint, but getting off to a good start can go a long way in setting up a successful campaign.
Using the Opta Power Rankings, we can quantify how easy (or difficult) each team’s opening schedule is.
As a reminder, these Power Rankings rate a frankly enormous number of teams (10,000+) across the globe based on a system that scores the current strongest side 100 and the weakest zero.
Those scores are then used to rank the teams in order from strongest to weakest.
Focusing on the Championship, we have looked at the average Opta Power Rating of each team’s opponents over the first few weeks to measure fixture difficulty.
These range from Southampton (the highest-ranked team in the league with a Opta Power Rating of 85.5, and therefore the hardest to play against) to Stoke City (ranked 502nd in the world with an Opta Power Rating of 77.5 and therefore the ‘easiest’ Championship team to play against on paper).
Here’s how things shape up.
The Opening Five Games
It is Watford who face the stiffest test across the opening five matchdays of the new Championship season.
The average Opta Power Rating of their opponents between MD 1-5 is 82.8, with home games against two of the pre-season favourites Southampton and West Ham, two trips to Wales to face Wrexham and Swansea, and another away day at West Brom.
Southampton (81st) and West Ham (96th) are the only two Championship clubs inside the top 100 of the current Opta Power Rankings, and Watford are the only side to have to face both in the first five matchdays.
Watford were one of the Opta supercomputer’s pre-season relegation favourites, just like Stoke City, who are deemed to have the fourth-hardest opening five games (82.2 average Opta Power Rating), behind Birmingham City and Burnley (82.4).
Portsmouth have the ‘kindest’ opening five fixtures to the new season, based on the Opta Power Rating of their five opponents. Two of those five games come against Derby County as well as promoted opposition in the form of Lincoln and Cardiff, while QPR and Bristol City finished 15th and 12th in the Championship last season respectively.
The Eight Matchdays Before the First International Break
There are eight Championship matchdays played between 14 August and 20 September, before an extended three-week international break gives sides a breather ahead of a busy autumn schedule.
Birmingham are the club who might need that rest more than any other, as their first eight matches of 2026-27 are deemed the hardest of the 24 Championship clubs based on the Opta Power Rankings.
The average Opta Power Rating of their first eight opponents is 82.5, which is higher than every other team in the division.
They face three of the four top-ranked Championship sides in the Opta Power Rankings at home across the first eight matchdays: Southampton (81st), Middlesbrough (127th) and Wolves (138th), while away games against fancied trio Sheffield United (235th), Wrexham (244th) and Norwich City (200th) also come within the first eight matchdays.
Middlesbrough led the Championship table after eight matches last season with 18 points (W5 D3 L0), two ahead of eventual champions Coventry City (16 – W4 D4 L0). Their stiffest test across the opening eight matchdays this time around, on paper at least, looks to be a trip to Burnley on MD4.
Sheffield United had a horrible start to 2025-26, which blew apart the Opta supercomputer projection as pre-season favourites for the Championship title. They lost their first six games to the league season and suffered defeat in their opening nine games (W1 D0 L8). That form saw Rubén Sellés sacked after five league games and replaced by Chris Wilder, who had been dismissed in favour of Sellés only three months earlier.
The Blades have one of the kinder opening schedules this time, according to the Opta Power Rankings, looking to make a much better start than last year.
Of all 24 Championship clubs, Preston North End are deemed to have the easiest opening eight games to the new season.
Their average opponent Opta Power Rating is 79.6, and they face two of the promoted sides, Bolton and Lincoln, as well as two of the three of the Opta supercomputer’s favourites for relegation: Charlton Athletic and Watford.
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Championship Fixture Difficulty: Who Has the Toughest Start to 2026-27? Opta Analyst.
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