Fantasy Premier League for Beginners: How the Game Works

Never played Fantasy Premier League and always wanted to try? This guide is for you.

How the game works

You get a budget of £100.0m to pick a 15-man squad:

• 2 goalkeepers
• 5 defenders
• 5 midfielders
• 3 forwards

Every player has a price, and you can pick a maximum of 3 players from any one club.

From that squad you name 11 starters before each gameweek deadline (90 minutes before the first match of the round). The rest sit on your bench.

Your starters score points based on what they actually do in the real matches. You can line up in any formation as long as you have at least one goalkeeper, three defenders and one forward.

If a starter doesn't play at all, they're replaced by a substitute.

©️ The captain

From your 11 starters you pick a captain and a vice-captain.

Your captain's points are doubled. If the captain doesn't play at all, the armband passes to the vice-captain. If neither plays, nobody is doubled that week.

🪑 The bench

The bench covers you for the unexpected — injuries, postponements, or a starter who simply isn't in the matchday squad.

A player counts as having played if he was on the pitch for at least one minute, or picked up a yellow or red card (even from the bench). Substitutions happen automatically at the end of the gameweek.

How auto-subs work:

• If your goalkeeper doesn't play, he's swapped for your substitute keeper.
• If an outfield starter doesn't play, he's replaced by the highest-priority bench player who did play and who doesn't break the formation rules above. (In a three-at-the-back setup, for example, a defender can only be replaced by another defender — even if a midfielder is first on your bench.)

🔁 Transfers

You have unlimited transfers until the first deadline of the season.

After that you get one free transfer per gameweek. You can make extra transfers beyond that, but each one costs 4 points off your total.

If you don't use your free transfer, it rolls over — so you can make 2 the following week, and so on, up to a maximum of 5 banked transfers.

💰 Player prices

Player prices move during the season based on how heavily a player is being bought and sold. Prices don't change at all until the season starts.

Note that the price shown on the transfers page is your selling price, which can be lower than the current buying price: you pay a 50% sell-on fee on any profit you've made, rounded to the nearest £0.1m.

So if you bought Haaland at 15.0 and he rose to 15.5, you'd sell him for 15.2.

This season the official game also added its own price-change predictor, showing how far along each player is towards a rise or a fall. Changes happen at midnight UK time, and prices are frozen until the Gameweek 1 deadline.

🍟 Chips

Chips give you a one-off boost during the season:

• Bench Boost — your bench players' points are added to your total.
• Triple Captain — your captain scores triple instead of double.
• Free Hit — unlimited free transfers for a single gameweek, after which your squad reverts to what it was.
• Wildcard — unlimited free transfers for a single gameweek, and the new squad is yours to keep.

That means each of the four chips is available once in Gameweeks 1-19, and again in Gameweeks 20-38.

Bench Boost and Triple Captain can be played as early as Gameweek 1. Wildcard and Free Hit only become available from Gameweek 2, since transfers are unlimited before the first deadline anyway.

You can't play more than one chip in the same gameweek.

🎯 Scoring

Clean sheet points go to a defender or goalkeeper who doesn't concede and plays at least 60 minutes (excluding stoppage time). If a player is substituted after 60 minutes and his team then concedes, he keeps the clean sheet points.

A player who is sent off keeps losing points for goals his team concedes afterwards.

🛡️ Defensive contribution points

Since 2025/26 you can earn 2 extra points for defensive work, and it carries over to this season:

• Defenders — 10 defensive actions in a match (clearances, blocks, interceptions and tackles).
• Midfielders and forwards — 12 defensive actions, with ball recoveries also counting towards their total.

It's capped at 2 points per match, and goalkeepers don't earn it at all.

This is worth knowing, because it turned a lot of cheap defenders and hard-working midfielders into far better picks than they look on paper.

🅰️ Assists

An assist generally goes to the player from the scoring team who made the final touch before the goal.

That can be a deliberate pass, an unintentional touch, or even a shot whose direct rebound is scored. A rebound can come off an opponent, off the goalkeeper, or off the woodwork.

A player also earns an assist if his pass or shot forces an opponent into an own goal, and if he wins a penalty or free-kick that is then scored.

No assist is awarded if:

• An opponent significantly changes the ball's path after the pass
• An unintentional defensive error led to the goal
• The scorer lost the ball and won it back himself before scoring

🎁 Bonus points

In every match, the Bonus Points System (BPS) weighs a range of statistics to give each player a BPS score.

The three highest-scoring players in each match earn bonus points: 3 for first, 2 for second and 1 for third.

📊 Leagues

You can create and join up to 30 private leagues with friends.

Every team is also entered automatically into global leagues:

• The overall league of every team in the game
• Your country's league
• Your favourite club's league
• A league of everyone who started in the same gameweek
• The Second Chance league, which starts at the halfway point

In classic leagues, teams are ranked by total season points. If two teams finish level, the one who made fewer transfers ranks higher (wildcards and free hits excluded).

Head-to-head leagues: you can also join a head-to-head league, where each week your team plays a fixture against another team in the league. The result is decided by that gameweek's score — 3 points for a win, 1 for a draw — and the table is ranked on those points.

🏆 Cup

Every classic league has its own cup, alongside the global cup that begins around the middle of the season and includes every team in the game. The cup works like a head-to-head league, except the winner of each drawn tie goes through and the loser is knocked out.