Chinese Super League 2026 (M)

China's professional league started in 1994 as Jia-A and was rebranded the Super League in 2004. For years it was a modest competition; then the money arrived, and it arrived all at once. Between 2011 and 2019 Guangzhou won eight titles — seven of them in a row from 2011 to 2017 — and the whole country went shopping: Hulk, Oscar, Paulinho, Carlos Tévez, coaches with European Cups on the CV and fees that went toe to toe with the Premier League's. That Guangzhou side also won the Asian Champions League in 2013 and 2015, the only two a Chinese club has ever lifted.

The stop was just as abrupt. In 2020 Jiangsu Suning were champions for the first time; in March 2021, four months later, they ceased operations and vanished. That same year the federation banned sponsor names from clubs — half the league had to rename itself overnight — and imposed a salary cap that emptied dressing rooms of foreigners. In January 2025 it was Guangzhou's turn, the most decorated club in the country: thrown out of professional football over debts.

What is striking is what did not move. With the stars gone and budgets halved, the Super League averaged 25,755 through the gate in 2025, the sixth-best attendance of any football league on earth.

The 2025 title came down to two points between two clubs from the same city. Shanghai Port finished on 66, Shanghai Shenhua on 64. Behind them came Chengdu Rongcheng, third on 60, Beijing Guoan on 57 and Shandong Taishan on 53. It was Port's fourth Super League and their third running: they won in 2018, then strung together 2023, 2024 and 2025.

The season's numbers pointed in opposite directions. Guoan scored more than anyone, 69 goals, and finished off the podium. Shenhua conceded 35, the meanest defence in the league, and lost the title by those two points: the best rearguard in the country came up short by the narrowest margin there is. Fábio Abreu, the Guoan striker, was top scorer with 28 goals.

At the bottom, Meizhou Hakka and Changchun Yatai went down. And before a ball was kicked, Cangzhou Mighty Lions were disqualified and never played at all. In China the season does not begin when the fixture list starts, but when you know how many clubs are still standing.

On 29 January 2026, five weeks before the opening fixture, the Chinese federation sanctioned thirteen professional clubs for match-fixing and improper dealings. Nine of them are Super League sides and they begin the year below zero: ten points off Shanghai Shenhua and Tianjin Jinmen Tiger, seven off Qingdao Hainiu, six off Shandong Taishan and Henan, and five off Beijing Guoan, Shanghai Port, Wuhan Three Towns and Zhejiang. Fifty-nine points wiped from the table before a minute was played.

The same investigation banned 73 people from football for life. Among them Li Tie, the former national coach and former Everton midfielder, now serving twenty years for bribery and match-fixing; Chen Xuyuan, the former federation president, is serving life.

Carrying that weight, Shanghai Port go for a fourth straight title and Shenhua, starting ten adrift, for the one that got away by two. Liaoning Tieren and Chongqing Tonglianglong come up. Three benches changed hands in January: Nick Montgomery took over Beijing Guoan after Quique Setién's spell, John Aloisi arrived at Chengdu Rongcheng, and Zheng Zhi, the former China captain, begins his coaching career at Qingdao West Coast. Thirty rounds on the calendar year, from 6 March to 8 November.