Ligue 2 2026/27 (M)

On 20 May 1934, Red Star of Saint-Ouen beat Olympique Alès 3-2 to become the first champions of France's Division 2. Ninety-two years on, Red Star are still in this division, still at the Stade Bauer and its 10,000 seats. The competition had been created in 1933, a year after France turned its top flight professional, with 23 clubs split into two groups: fourteen in the Nord, nine in the Sud. The name Ligue 2 only arrived in 2002.

The 2026/27 campaign is the 88th edition, and 171 different clubs have passed through it. Le Havre lead the roll of honour with six titles and share a second record, 46 seasons played, which Grenoble matches this very year. Paris Saint-Germain have been here too (two seasons, the last in 1973/74), along with Lyon (thirteen, up to 1989), Lille (fourteen, up to 1999/2000), Marseille (twelve, up to 1996) and Monaco (twelve, up to 2012/13).

There are darker chapters. In November 2014 the presidents of Caen and Nîmes were among those arrested in a match-fixing investigation; the starting point was a 1-1 between the two in May of that year, a scoreline that suited both perfectly. And in December 2021 the LFP clubs voted to cut the division from 20 teams to 18, effective from 2024/25. That vote is where today's 34 matchdays and 306 fixtures come from.

Sixty-seven points, twenty wins and sixty goals: those were the numbers that gave Troyes the 2025/26 title, their third in the second tier. Their Moroccan striker Tawfik Bentayeb was the division's leading scorer with 18. Le Mans went up behind them, second on 62 points with only four defeats in 34 games, back in Ligue 1 after seventeen years away.

The play-off was another story. On 12 May 2026 fifth-placed Rodez won 2-3 at the Stade Bauer against Red Star; three days later they drew 0-0 at Geoffroy-Guichard with Saint-Étienne and lost 7-6 on penalties. That left the two-legged final against Ligue 1's sixteenth-placed side: 0-0 in Saint-Étienne on 26 May in front of 39,772, then 4-1 to Nice at the Allianz Riviera on 29 May, played behind closed doors on the authorities' orders. Jonathan Clauss opened the scoring and Elye Wahi finished it with two.

At the bottom, Bastia came seventeenth on 28 points with just 23 goals scored, the league's weakest attack; Amiens finished last after losing 22 matches. Both went down. Laval, sixteenth, survived their tie against Rouen, third in the National: 1-1 at Le Petit-Quevilly on 19 May and 1-0 at the Francis Le Basser on 24 May, Malik Sellouki with the goal.

Nantes drop into the second tier after thirteen straight years in the top flight, arriving with La Beaujoire and its 35,322 seats and with Michel Der Zakarian back in the dugout since 17 June. Down with them come Metz, eighteenth in Ligue 1, who have hired Luxembourg's Luc Holtz. From below come Dijon, champions of the last Championnat National, and runners-up Sochaux.

Sochaux deserve a footnote of their own. The club founded by Jean-Pierre Peugeot in 1928 return after three years in the third tier, and on 11 March 2026 Peugeot announced they were coming back as a partner on a five-season deal, eleven years after selling the club. Saint-Étienne, third last season, start under Scotland's Ian Cathro, appointed on 8 June after Philippe Montanier left: Geoffroy-Guichard, capacity 41,965, is ten times the size of Pau's Nouste Camp, which holds 4,031.

Nine of the eighteen clubs changed coach over the summer. Beyond Nantes, Metz and Saint-Étienne, there were moves at Reims (Nicolas Usaï), Grenoble (Olivier Frapolli, poached from Laval), Laval themselves (David Vignes), Nancy (Oswald Tanchot), Red Star (Damien Perrinelle) and Clermont (David Guion). Saint-Étienne, Nantes and Metz start as the natural favourites, with Reims — sixth on 56 points and beaten only six times — and Rodez close behind. It begins on 8 August 2026 and ends on 22 May 2027.

Two automatic tickets and a ladder. The champions and the runners-up go straight up to Ligue 1. Fourth hosts fifth over a single leg; the winner travels to third, again in one game; and whoever survives faces Ligue 1's sixteenth-placed club over two legs for the last place. At the other end, seventeenth and eighteenth are relegated automatically, while sixteenth plays a two-legged tie against the third-placed side from the division below. Level points are separated by goal difference and then goals scored.

That division below has a new name: the Championnat National becomes Ligue 3 and turns professional. Philippe Diallo, president of the French Football Federation, announced it on 16 January 2025, and the executive committee made it official on 12 May 2026.

Then there is the DNCG, which in France rules before a ball is kicked. Created in 1990 and housed at the LFP, it audits the books of professional clubs and can ban signings, block a promotion or impose an administrative relegation; clubs have seven days to appeal and, after that, the CNOSF or the administrative courts. This is not theory: on 28 June 2023 the DNCG sent Sochaux down to the third tier after nine straight seasons here, and back in June 2019 it had demoted both Sochaux and Nancy — both in this season's field — before the pair were reinstated on appeal a month later. Martigues, relegated on the pitch in May 2025, were excluded from national competitions on 4 July and ended up starting the season in Départemental 3, the eleventh tier of French football.