FPL Best & Worst Opening Fixtures 26/27 (GW1–6)

Bournemouth's first six Fantasy Premier League fixtures of 2026/27 all rate FDR 3 or higher — the toughest opening run of any club in the game — while Manchester United and Manchester City get the kindest starts on the schedule. Talent still wins you points, but fixtures decide when those points arrive, and this season's early schedule already has clear winners and losers before a ball is kicked. Check the full fixture difficulty grid for the run all the way to Gameweek 38 — this guide covers the opening six.

Gameweek 1, one line at a time

Season 2026/27 kicks off later than usual — Friday 21 August, with an 18:30 UK deadline — because the World Cup only just finished. Post-World Cup fatigue is the theme of the round: City (roughly 5,027 minutes across their World Cup squad) and Arsenal (roughly 4,285) carry the heaviest loads, so treat their most-used internationals as rotation risks even in kind fixtures.

Day	Fixture	FPL takeaway
Fri 21 Aug (20:00)	Arsenal v Coventry	About as easy as openers get for Arsenal, but Saliba's injury means Gabriel carries the defence alone.
Sat 22 Aug (12:30)	Hull v Man Utd	Man Utd's kindest possible start — away at a newly-promoted side — and the first fixture of Bruno's soft opening run.
Sat 22 Aug	Everton v Crystal Palace	A fair, 50/50 opener; the real fixture swing for Everton's defenders arrives once the promoted sides show up.
Sat 22 Aug	Ipswich v Sunderland	One of the round's best value fixtures for Sunderland — away at a newly-promoted side before it finds its feet at this level.
Sat 22 Aug	Nott'm Forest v Leeds	A tough travel day for Leeds and a promising opener for Forest's attackers, Gibbs-White included.
Sat 22 Aug (17:30)	Brentford v Spurs	De Zerbi's first game in charge, away from home — no strong lean for Spurs assets either way.
Sun 23 Aug	Brighton v Aston Villa	Watkins' first game since a minimal World Cup — our model's top GW1 pick, price cut and all.
Sun 23 Aug	Man City v Bournemouth	A brutal opening assignment for Bournemouth, and Haaland's first banker captaincy of the season.
Sun 23 Aug (16:30)	Newcastle v Liverpool	Game one of Liverpool's soft four-fixture opening stretch, even though it's away from Anfield.
Mon 24 Aug (20:00)	Fulham v Chelsea	A gentle first test for Xabi Alonso's Chelsea, and a fair spot for a Palmer bounce-back with no midweek football to manage.

Target these teams

Four clubs stand out for the whole of the opening six Gameweeks: Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea and Sunderland. None of them face a run of genuinely tough matches before Gameweek 7, which makes their premium and mid-price assets the safest early holds — Bruno Fernandes at Man Utd chief among them, priced at £12.0m off the back of a soft run and pencilled in as the consensus vice-captain behind Haaland.

Arsenal deserve a mention too: across their first eight fixtures they face only one recognised top-six opponent, Aston Villa in Gameweek 2. With Saliba out for several months after his World Cup injury, Gabriel becomes close to essential — last season's top-scoring defender is now the one certainty in an otherwise short-handed Arsenal back line.

Liverpool's opener is softer than the away trip suggests. Newcastle away, Forest at home, Ipswich away, Fulham at home — the tough part of their schedule (Manchester City) doesn't land until Gameweek 6. That's a five-week window for Liverpool assets — Szoboszlai's nailed minutes and set pieces are the cleanest route in — though a new manager bedding in, Salah gone and Isak working back to fitness are honest caveats on how quickly the points arrive.

Everton are a slower-burn pick: they play back-to-back promoted opposition early in the season, which is exactly the kind of run that suits Tarkowski at the back and Ndiaye further forward — a clean-sheet and attacking-return swing worth having on the radar a Gameweek or two before it lands, not after.

Fade these opening runs

Bournemouth are the clearest fade of the round: Manchester City, Liverpool and Chelsea all appear inside their first six fixtures, and every one of those six rates FDR 3 or higher. It's not a squad to build around before Gameweek 7.

Hull face Man Utd, Villa, Chelsea and Newcastle inside their first five matches as a newly-promoted side — a brutal introduction that argues against reaching for their attackers early, even at £4.0m and below.

Coventry open away at Arsenal and also meet Manchester City inside their first few Gameweeks. That said, don't write off van Ewijk just because the fixtures are unkind — he's a nailed-on right-back with genuine set-piece and direct free-kick threat, and that's a profile worth holding through a hard run rather than selling into it, ready for when Coventry's schedule eases.

Leeds round out the list: a tough opening stretch with little in the way of an obvious soft landing spot in the first six Gameweeks.

How to plan around a fixture swing

None of this is fixed. Fixture runs are about relative strength, not certainty, and the schedule that looks brutal in August can turn friendly by October — Bournemouth's defenders, for instance, are exactly the kind of squad worth revisiting once their run of reds ends. The skill is spotting the swing before it lands: buying into a good run a Gameweek early, before the price rises and everyone else has the same idea, and moving on from a player just as their fixtures turn hard rather than after a bad week finally shows up in the score. For the mechanics of reading a run — and the traps, like mistaking one green fixture for a genuine swing — see our fixture difficulty explained guide. There are no blanks or doubles flagged in the opening Gameweeks, so early planning is as simple as it gets: no need to hold a Free Hit or Bench Boost back for a schedule quirk, just build around the runs above.

Plan it properly

Reading the fixtures is only half the job — the other half is turning that into an actual squad, GW1 through GW6, without blowing your budget on players whose easy run ends just as the wildcard window opens. Our planner lines up your squad against the live fixture grid and our expected points model Gameweek by Gameweek, so you can see exactly where a transfer pays off before you commit. Pair it with our captain picks for Gameweek 1 for the armband call, and if you're weighing up the promoted sides' cut-price defenders against these fixture runs, our promoted teams guide breaks down which of them are worth an early punt regardless.