AFLW 2026 (F)

On 3 February 2017 Carlton and Collingwood opened the first round in the league's history, and the match had to be moved from Olympic Park Oval to Ikon Park because demand blew past every forecast. A crowd of 24,568 got in and the gates were locked during the first quarter for safety. Eight foundation clubs — Adelaide, Brisbane, Carlton, Collingwood, Fremantle, Greater Western Sydney, Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs — played seven matches each, and there was no finals series at all: the top two on a single ladder went straight into the Grand Final. Adelaide won that first decider against Brisbane, 35-29, on the Gold Coast.

Growth came in jumps. Geelong and North Melbourne joined in 2019; Gold Coast, Richmond, St Kilda and West Coast in 2020; Essendon, Hawthorn, Port Adelaide and Sydney in 2022, taking the league to today's eighteen. The 2020 season was abandoned to the pandemic with no premiers, and 2022 held two full seasons — one finished in March, the next began in August — to shift the competition into the back half of the year. Until that same 2022, admission was free.

Nine premierships have gone to five clubs across ten seasons: Adelaide three (2017, 2019 and the first of 2022), Brisbane two (2021 and 2023), North Melbourne two (2024 and 2025), the Western Bulldogs one (2018) and Melbourne one (the second of 2022). The attendance record has stood since 31 March 2019: 53,034 at Adelaide Oval to watch Adelaide beat Carlton 63-18.

North Melbourne finished the 2025 home-and-away season with twelve wins from twelve and a percentage of 321.5 — they scored more than three times what was scored against them. In round three they won 114-14 at Fremantle, a hundred-point margin and the most lopsided scoreline of the past two seasons. Melbourne, Brisbane and Hawthorn rounded out the top four on nine wins and three losses apiece.

The finals were no harder. They beat Hawthorn 42-3 in the first week, Melbourne 46-36 in the preliminary final, and lifted the cup at Ikon Park on 29 November. Brisbane had come through the other side of the draw, winning at Melbourne (56-43) and running over Carlton (67-32), only to fall one match short again: a second straight Grand Final lost to the same opponent.

Further down, two collapses of different kinds. Richmond had played the first week of finals in 2024 and a year later won two of twelve to finish sixteenth. Gold Coast came last on a percentage of 41.3. And one line that frames all of it: North Melbourne have not lost a match since the 2023 Grand Final, when Brisbane beat them 44-27 at that same Ikon Park. Twenty-nine games on, the run reads twenty-eight wins and a draw.

Mick Stinear coached Melbourne for nine seasons and delivered the second 2022 premiership; in December he left for Geelong, and Melbourne did not find a replacement until 7 April, when they appointed Tom Wilson. His is one of six coaching changes over the southern winter: Ryan Davis takes over at Adelaide, Jarrad Donders at Richmond, Glenn Strachan at Port Adelaide and Colin O'Riordan at Sydney, the first Irishman to run a side in this competition.

At the top, the question is whether anyone can stop the champions. North Melbourne are chasing a third flag in a row; Brisbane return with two Grand Finals stuck in their throat; Carlton reached the preliminary final from fifth and Hawthorn bowed out in the semis; and Adelaide, the only club with more than two titles, start under a new coach. Melbourne finished second on the ladder and begin without the man who took them there.

The rulebook changes too: scores are now reviewed on vision, with four goal-post cameras installed at every AFLW ground and an official checking every score against Hawk-Eye footage — though goal umpires cannot call for a review. The league's first pre-season draft was held on 4 May. Two grounds are new: Cockburn ARC Oval, where Fremantle play six matches, and Hawthorn's Kennedy Community Centre, which opens in round four. And eight days before the first bounce, at North Sydney Oval in front of 9,017 people, Australia beat Ireland 91-41 in the first AFLW representative match since 2017.

Each club plays twelve matches against twelve of the other seventeen, so there is no home-and-away double-up and not even a fixture against everyone: two sides on the same record have not played the same schedule. The ladder pays 4 points for a win and 2 for a draw, and the tiebreaker is percentage: points for over points against. That a 321.5 and a 41.3 coexisted in 2025 shows how far that ratio can pull clubs apart.

The top eight go into a four-week finals series, nine matches in all. Week one has four: 1st v 4th and 2nd v 3rd in the qualifying finals, 5th v 8th and 6th v 7th in the eliminations. Only the top four get a safety net — lose a qualifying final and you live on into a semi; lose an elimination final and you are done that night. Then come two semi-finals, two preliminary finals and the Grand Final on the last weekend of November. It was not always this way: in 2019 the league split into conferences, with two clubs from each going straight to the preliminary finals.

Then there is the quirk almost nobody outside Australia knows: the Grand Final has no fixed venue. The host is earned inside the finals themselves. The two qualifying-final winners are ranked first and second for hosting rights; the two losers third and fourth; the elimination survivors fifth and sixth. Topping the ladder is not enough to host the last match — you have to win your qualifying final too. The past three Grand Finals have all been played at Ikon Park, and all three because somebody earned it.