Liga F 2026/27: The Full Season Preview

Liga F returns this weekend.

Barcelona are defending seven consecutive league titles. Real Madrid have rebuilt. Real Sociedad are coming off their best season of the professional era. Two familiar clubs are back from the second division.

And for the first time since 2012, the league begins without Alexia Putellas wearing Barcelona colours.

The champions have changed.

The favourite has not.

The season at a glance

Liga F will run across 30 matchdays, including two midweek rounds, before finishing on 23 May — one month before the 2027 Women's World Cup begins in Brazil.

Sunday evening.

30 August.

19:00.

Barcelona walk out at the Estadi Johan Cruyff to begin another Liga F season.

The last time Barcelona played a Liga F match there, Alexia Putellas played her final game for the club.

She had provided one final assist. Played 81 final minutes. Worn the captain's armband one final time.

Barcelona beat Real Sociedad 2–1.

Then she left.

Alexia arrived at Barcelona in 2012, before the club had ever reached a Women's Champions League final. She leaves after helping turn it into one of the defining teams in world football.

On 8 July, London City Lionesses announced her signing.

Mapi León has gone too. So have Ona Batlle, Salma Paralluelo and Giulia Dragoni.

Barcelona are still Barcelona.

But this is the first season in a very long time in which we get to find out what Barcelona look like after losing part of the identity that built them.

The first season without Alexia Putellas

There are players who belong to an era. Then there are players who help create one.

When Alexia joined Barça at 18, the women's team was not playing Champions League finals in front of the world. It was not filling major stadiums. It did not have the gravitational pull that now allows it to sign some of the best footballers on the planet.

She grew while the club grew. Then they accelerated together.

The first European title came in 2021. Alexia won the Ballon d'Or later that year and again in 2022. There were more league titles, more finals, more nights when Barcelona stopped looking like a club trying to reach Europe's elite and started looking like the standard everyone else had to reach.

Her final season ended appropriately. Barcelona won everything they entered. The league. The Copa de la Reina. The Supercopa. And, in Oslo, the Champions League — Barcelona beating OL Lyonnes 4–0 through two goals from Ewa Pajor and two from Salma Paralluelo to claim their fourth European crown in six seasons.

Three days later, Barcelona announced that Alexia would leave. The following evening came the goodbye at Johan Cruyff. And then, eventually, London.

Her departure deserves more than one line in a summer transfer roundup because it changes the context of the entire season. Not necessarily the outcome. Barcelona remain overwhelming favourites. But there is a difference between replacing a footballer and replacing what that footballer represented.

Nobody Barcelona have signed this summer is being asked to become Alexia Putellas. That would be an impossible job. The more interesting question is whether the next Barcelona needs anyone to.

29 wins from 30. And somehow, a rebuild.

It would be easier to sell the idea of vulnerability if Barcelona had shown much of it last season. They did not.

Their final Liga F record reads almost like a typo:

Real Madrid finished second with 72. Fifteen points behind.

Barcelona's only defeat came in November, when Edna Imade converted a penalty and Real Sociedad survived everything Barça threw at them to win 1–0 in San Sebastián. Nobody else managed it.

And the numbers become even sillier when you look at individual players. Claudia Pina won the league's scoring title with 21 goals despite playing only 1,498 minutes — one every 71 minutes. Ewa Pajor added 16. Caroline Graham Hansen finished the campaign by scoring a hat-trick against Madrid CFF.

Barcelona were not merely better than the competition last season. For long stretches, they seemed to be playing it on different settings.

And now they have to evolve. Alexia has gone. Mapi has gone. Ona has gone. Salma has gone. In their place comes something younger and less settled.

Kerolin arrives from Manchester City, bringing pace, directness and one-on-one threat to an attack that hardly lacked any of those things already. Barcelona have tied the Brazilian international to a deal through 2030. Nineteen-year-old Dutch defender Renée van Asten arrives from Ajax after a breakout season that earned her the Johan Cruyff Talent of the Year award in the Netherlands. Martina Fernández returns home after Everton, while Tyler McCamey joins from Dallas Trinity. Carla Julià steps up from Barça B.

This does not look like a club panicking. It looks like a club trying to change while it is still strong enough to choose how.

And that may be the most intimidating thing about Barcelona. Even their transition season begins with them as European champions.

Claudia Pina is no longer just part of the future

For years, Barcelona's depth created a strange problem. You could be one of the best young players in Europe and still feel like the next name on a list full of Ballon d'Or winners, World Cup winners and Champions League winners.

That list is shorter now. And Claudia Pina is 25.

Last season's top scorer is no longer the brilliant younger attacker waiting behind the established generation. She is becoming the established generation.

Twenty-one league goals changed that. So did five assists. So did the efficiency: according to Liga F's own data, Pina's expected-goal output suggested around 13 goals. She scored 21.

Barcelona still have Aitana Bonmatí, Patri Guijarro, Caroline Graham Hansen, Irene Paredes, Ewa Pajor and Cata Coll. This is not a squad suddenly stripped of experience. But the hierarchy is shifting.

Pina may be the player who makes that shift visible. The player who spent years being introduced as Barcelona's next great attacker now begins a season in which nobody needs the word next.

Real Madrid: if not now, when?

There is a brutal way to summarise Real Madrid's last season. They won 23 of 30 matches. They scored 65 goals. They conceded only 18. They finished with 72 points. And they never looked particularly close to winning the league.

That is the standard Barcelona have created.

Madrid's response has not been to make one or two corrections around the edges. They have rebuilt. Caroline Weir is gone after scoring 14 league goals last season. Alba Redondo, Misa Rodríguez, Tere Abelleira, Hanna Bennison, Naomie Feller, Antonia Silva and several others have left too.

In have come Lineth Beerensteyn and Janou Levels from Wolfsburg, Elisa Senß from Eintracht Frankfurt, Andreia Jacinto from Real Sociedad and Felicia Schröder from BK Häcken, alongside promotions from Madrid's own system.

It is a different team. That creates risk. It also creates opportunity. Beerensteyn gives Madrid a direct, experienced presence in attack. Senß adds control and physicality to midfield. Jacinto already knows the league — and arrives directly from the team that finished only six points behind Madrid last season.

And Linda Caicedo is still there. At 21, the Colombian is already one of the few players in the league capable of changing the temperature of a match every time she receives the ball.

Madrid's problem has never really been whether they possess enough good footballers. It is whether they can turn enough good footballers into a team capable of surviving Barcelona's relentless accumulation of points. Last year, 72 was not remotely enough. This season, they need to make Barcelona notice them earlier.

Conveniently, the fixture list has given them no time to settle. Their first match is Atlético Madrid. Sunday. 21:00. Alfredo Di Stéfano. Welcome back.

The race behind the top two might be even better

Barcelona finished first. Real Madrid second. Then things became much less predictable.

Real Sociedad finished third on 66 points — only six behind Madrid — after winning 20 matches and losing four. Costa Adeje Tenerife were fourth with 54. Atlético Madrid finished fifth on 51. Granada followed on 45.

Those numbers matter because the story of this league cannot permanently be reduced to Can anyone stop Barcelona? Sometimes the better question is: what is happening everywhere else?

Real Sociedad were excellent last year. They were the only side to beat Barcelona and secured a place in Champions League qualifying. But success has made them a target. Andreia Jacinto has gone to Real Madrid, while Lucía Rodríguez has joined Atlético. Rebuilding while trying to prove that third place was not a one-season peak may be one of the most interesting tests in Spain.

Then there is Tenerife. Their fourth-place finish deserves more attention than it received. They lost only four league matches all season — the same number as Real Madrid and Real Sociedad — while drawing twelve. They were difficult to beat almost every week. Their reward? Barcelona away on matchday one. Naturally.

Atlético, meanwhile, have acted like a club unhappy with fifth. David González takes over as head coach. Viola Calligaris arrives from Juventus, Henrietta Csiszár from Inter, Maite Zubieta from Athletic Club, Lucía Rodríguez from Real Sociedad and Allegra Poljak from Madrid CFF, among a broad squad reshaping.

Barcelona may begin as favourite. Madrid may be the obvious challenger. But the battle around the Champions League places could be where this season becomes hardest to predict.

Alavés and Valencia: two roads back

Neither promoted club needs directions to the top flight. They have both been here before. They simply took very different routes back.

Deportivo Alavés: patience. Alavés were relegated in 2023. They did not immediately bounce back. Instead, Andrea Esteban and the club built. The reward arrived three years later. Alavés secured direct promotion with two matches still to play after beating CE Europa 4–0 away from home. At the time promotion was sealed, they had lost only four league matches, conceded only 14 goals and possessed the best defensive record in Primera Federación. There is something reassuringly unglamorous about how they did it — not through one spectacular playoff run, not because of a superstar season, but through consistency, through defending, through becoming difficult to beat. Those qualities tend to travel well into a relegation fight.

Valencia: refusal. Valencia took the opposite route. They went down in 2025. They decided one season was enough. Third place in Primera Federación sent them into the promotion playoffs. They survived the semi-final and reached a two-legged final against Villarreal. The first match ended 0–0. In the second, Villarreal scored first. Valencia were heading toward another year in the second division. Then, in the final minute, Leyre Monente collected a loose ball outside the box and equalised. 1–1. Extra time. No penalties. Under the competition rules, if the tie remained level after extra time, the team that had finished higher in the regular season would go up. Valencia held on. One year after relegation, they were back.

And because football occasionally has a sense of humour, this is how their new season begins: Deportivo Alavés vs Valencia CF, Sunday, 30 August, 17:00. The two promoted teams against each other. Before either gets to worry about Barcelona, Madrid or survival projections, somebody has the chance to put three top-flight points on the board.

Which teams are playing this season?

Sixteen clubs make up this season's competition: Athletic Club, Atlético de Madrid, FC Barcelona, Deportivo Abanca, Deportivo Alavés, Logroño United, SD Eibar, RCD Espanyol, FC Badalona Women, Granada CF, Madrid CFF, Real Madrid CF, Real Sociedad, Sevilla FC, Costa Adeje Tenerife, Valencia CF.

Each will play 30 league matches in an asymmetric schedule, producing 240 fixtures across the season.

€55 million, four free games every weekend, and a league trying to grow

There is another reason 2026/27 feels different. It is not happening on the pitch.

This summer, Liga F clubs approved a €55 million investment led by Gasol16 Ventures — founded by former NBA star Pau Gasol — and Fortified Partners. The investment will be deployed over four seasons, beginning now, with the stated aim of accelerating professionalisation, commercial development, international growth and player visibility. The investors describe it as the largest private-capital investment ever made in a women's sports competition in Europe.

That would be significant in any season. It becomes more interesting alongside what is happening on television.

Now the league is pushing harder on accessibility. For the next three seasons, DAZN will broadcast all eight matches every round in Spain and Andorra. TVE and 3Cat/TV3 will broadcast four of those eight matches free-to-air. Half of the entire league will therefore be available free every weekend.

This is important. Because Spain does not have a talent problem. It has some of the best players in the world. One of the best national teams in the world. The reigning European club champions. A Clásico with international recognition. The harder task has always been turning those ingredients into a domestic competition that people follow habitually rather than occasionally.

A league is not built only by producing great football. People need to see it. They need to know when it is on. They need to build a habit around it. Four free matches every weekend is not just a broadcast deal. It is an invitation.

Five players to watch

The dates to circle

The two Clásicos are scheduled for 4 October in Barcelona and 21 February in Madrid. The summer transfer market remains open until 18 September, meaning the squads we see this weekend are not necessarily the squads we will see in October.

Opening weekend: all eight matches

Saturday, 29 August

Sunday, 30 August

There are two matches we would circle immediately. The first is obvious for emotional reasons.

Then, two hours later:

Where to watch Liga F

In Spain and Andorra, DAZN will broadcast all eight games from every matchday. TVE and 3Cat/TV3 will show four games per round free-to-air, meaning 50% of the competition can be watched without a paid subscription.

For the opening weekend:

International rights vary by country, so check your local broadcaster before kick-off.

Liga F fixtures by team

Follow the whole competition or just the club you support. Each HerFixtures team calendar updates automatically throughout the season.

Our predictions

Champions: FC Barcelona. We tried. We looked at the departures. We looked at Real Madrid's recruitment. We looked at the possibility of transition. And we still cannot make a serious case for anybody else as favourite. Barcelona won 29 of 30 league matches last year. They finished with a +121 goal difference. They lost Alexia Putellas, Mapi León, Ona Batlle and Salma Paralluelo — and can still start a team containing Aitana Bonmatí, Patri Guijarro, Caroline Graham Hansen, Claudia Pina, Ewa Pajor, Irene Paredes and Cata Coll. That is the problem.

Our call: Barcelona win an eighth consecutive title. But not with 87 points. And not with 29 victories. The gap closes.

Second: Real Madrid. Madrid's ceiling may be higher than last season's. Their floor may also be lower — that is what happens when this much of a squad changes at once. Beerensteyn, Senß and Jacinto are excellent additions, and Linda Caicedo remains capable of becoming the most decisive non-Barcelona player in the division. But asking a rebuilt side to immediately overhaul one of the most dominant teams in European football feels one year early. Second again. Closer this time.

The race for third: chaos, hopefully. Real Sociedad have earned the right to start as favourites for third after 66 points last season. Atlético should be stronger. Tenerife have already demonstrated that they are exceptionally hard to beat. If one part of the table gives us a genuine week-to-week fight, this is where we expect it.

Promoted team most likely to stay up: Deportivo Alavés. Valencia's return story is better cinema. Alavés look more immediately built for survival. Their promotion came through defensive stability, consistency and a young squad that spent three seasons developing together. Newly promoted clubs rarely get to dictate games in the top division. Being comfortable without control helps. Alavés already know how.

Quick answers

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At 19:00 on Sunday, Barcelona will walk onto the Johan Cruyff as Spanish and European champions. Claudia Pina will be there. Ewa Pajor will be there. Aitana Bonmatí will be there. Alexia Putellas will not.

For fourteen seasons, that was a sentence nobody could write.

There will be no dramatic collapse because one player has gone. Great teams do not work like that, and Barcelona have too much talent for nostalgia to become a tactical problem. But something has ended. Alexia arrived before Barcelona ruled Spain, before four European titles, before Ballons d'Or, before the crowds and the records and the assumption that every season should end with trophies. She did not simply play through the rise. She became one of its faces. Now the league she helped transform starts again without her.

Around Barcelona, Real Madrid are rebuilding. Real Sociedad are trying to prove last year was not a peak. Atlético want back into Europe's conversation. Tenerife want to show that fourth place was no accident. Alavés and Valencia have fought their way back. Around all of them, the league begins a €55 million investment cycle and puts half of every matchday on free television.

Sixteen clubs. Two hundred and forty matches. Thirty matchdays. And, before the first whistle, every number in the table is finally the same. Zero.

Liga F starts Saturday. You don't have to wonder when.

HerFixtures is a women's sports fixture calendar for fans who are done missing games.