Since 2025/26 you get two sets of chips — one per half of the season. That changed how they need to be planned, and it's the first thing to understand.
How chips work this season
There are four chips: Wildcard, Bench Boost, Triple Captain and Free Hit.
Each is available twice — once in Gameweeks 1-19, and again in Gameweeks 20-38.
The most important rule: a chip you don't use in the first half doesn't carry over. It's simply gone. It used to make sense to save everything for the run-in; now that's an expensive mistake.
Bench Boost and Triple Captain can be played as early as Gameweek 1. Wildcard and Free Hit only from Gameweek 2, since transfers are unlimited before the first deadline anyway.
You can't play more than one chip in the same gameweek.
🃏 Wildcard
Unlimited free transfers for one gameweek, and the new squad stays with you afterwards.
It's the most flexible chip there is, which also makes it the easiest to waste. When it's genuinely worth playing:
- When your squad is too far from where you want it to be, and fixing it with normal transfers would cost too many hits.
- When the fixtures turn — clubs entering an unusually good or bad run, and it's worth setting up in advance.
- When injuries or suspensions have wrecked half your team at once.
What to avoid: wildcarding in a panic after one bad gameweek. Most of the time the squad isn't actually broken, and you've burned your strongest chip.
🪑 Bench Boost
The points from all four bench players are added to your starting eleven.
Bench Boost rewards preparation. There's no point playing it on a bench of cheap enablers who barely play — you want a gameweek where all 15 players have a fixture, ideally against soft opposition.
That's what makes it a natural fit for a double gameweek, when some clubs play twice. But it's available from Gameweek 1, and the first half of the season rarely has doubles — so you need to find a week where your bench is genuinely worth something.
👑 Triple Captain
Your captain scores triple instead of double.
The simplest chip to understand and the easiest to play at the wrong moment. What you're looking for:
- A player with two fixtures in the same gameweek, ideally against two weak opponents.
- Or, if no double is within reach, a premium in form against a leaky defence, preferably at home.
The difference between a good Triple Captain and a bad one is usually not the player — it's the gameweek.
🆓 Free Hit
Unlimited free transfers for one gameweek, after which your squad reverts exactly as it was.
Free Hit is an emergency chip, and that's fine. The two classic scenarios:
- A blank gameweek, where much of your squad has no fixture at all. Rather than tearing the team apart with transfers, you field a one-off squad and come straight back.
- A double gameweek where you want to load up on clubs playing twice without paying for it in long-term transfers.
Its great strength is that it commits you to nothing afterwards. Its weakness is that it leaves you with nothing either.
Planning them together
A few rules of thumb I work to:
- Plan each half separately. They're two independent sets, with no connection between them.
- Don't save everything for Gameweek 19. If you're halfway through a half and haven't found a good use for a chip, start actively looking for one.
- Second-half chips are worth more — that's where most of the doubles and blanks are, and where league gaps close.
- A chip played at a decent moment beats a chip never played. The loss from an unused chip is certain; the loss from imperfect timing is a few points.