All you need to know about the fixtures release for both the Championship & the Carabao Cup and finally know where & when Southampton will be playing next season. But this season Saints first competitive game will not be in the League and could also be against Portsmouth.

Southampton FC's Championship fixtures will be released on Thursday, 25 June at 12pm (noon), while the draw for the Carabao Cup will take place live on Sky Sports at 4.30pm.

More than 1,000 matches across the Championship, League One, League Two, Carabao Cup and Vertu Trophy will be shown live on Sky Sports, although none of these will be shown at 3pm on a Saturday when the the non televised weekend matches will be played.

The EFL is not under as much pressure from the Television companies to delay selections as the Premier League is, therefore they are very quick to announce the televised games and the first batch will be announced just a week after the fixture list itself, that being Thursday July 2nd.

This will cover all the fixtures in the period from the start of the season up till the end of September.

Further televised games from October to the weekend of January 8-11, 2027 will be confirmed by Friday, July 31, meaning that by the end of July we will be able to work out what games we will want to attend with as much as 5 months notice.

After that the next round of fixtures to take us through to the weekend of March 2-3rd will be announced by Friday, November 6.

After that the televised picks will move to a more flexible basis as you would expect to reflect those teams who have something to play for either at the top or the foot of the table.

The Key dates are

July 2, 2026 - All live TV selections before the end of September.
July 31, 2026 - All live TV selections up to and including January 8-11, 2027.
November 6, 2026 - All live TV selections up to and including March 2-3, 2027.
February 5, 2027 - Selections for fixtures on the weekend of March 5-8.
February 12, 2027 onwards - Weekly made four weeks in advance.
Penultimate weekend - Selections three weeks in advance.
Final weekend - Selections during week before the fixtures.

The season itself will begin on Friday 14th August with a televised game.

But the season will start with the Carabao Cup, after a play off round to round the club's down from the 72 in total to 70 clubs in the draw, the fixtures will be played on the weekend of 7th-9th August rather than in midweek.

In this round the draw will be regionalised into a North & South section, this means that we could actually face Portsmouth in our first competitive game of the season, I suspect that would not please the police too much with such short notice to plan the fixture.

All Photos Via Reuters