Serie B 2026/27 (M)

Serie B was born in 1929, the same year the Italian championship was unified into a national home-and-away tournament instead of the regional groups played until then. This is its 95th edition, and in almost a century it has been every size: it once had 24 clubs, it has run with three groups and with one, and since 2004 it has settled at twenty.

Its character comes not from who goes up but from who comes down. Juventus spent a whole season here (2006/07, after Calciopoli), as have Napoli, Milan and Fiorentina, and the relegation of an Italian giant is not an anomaly: it is part of the script. The sporting consequence is a league where the budget does not order the table, because the clubs with the biggest wage bills also arrive under pressure to go up at the first attempt.

What sets it apart from almost any other European second tier is how it hands out its places. Finishing third is not enough: you have to earn it in a three-round play-off where the better-placed sides have an advantage but no guarantee. That design produces a month of knockout football every spring that Serie A simply does not have.

Venezia won the 2025/26 league with 82 points and went straight back to Serie A, with Frosinone behind them in second. None of that is what the season was remembered for.

The play-off final was contested by Monza, third in the regular season, and Catanzaro, fifth. It finished 2-2 on aggregate and there was no extra time and no penalties: the rules give promotion to the better-placed side over the year, so Monza went up without winning the tie. Weeks earlier the play-out between 16th and 17th had ended 0-0 across both legs, and the same rule saved Südtirol and sent Bari down to Serie C. Two ties, four matches, not one winner on the pitch.

Reggiana, Spezia and Pescara completed the relegations. Südtirol, saved by one place in the table, is among the twenty starting again in August; Bari is not.

Serie A sent down Cremonese, Hellas Verona and Pisa, and all three start on 21 August with the label that weighs most in this league: obliged favourite. Verona arrive with the most recent top-flight history; Pisa had only just gone up and come straight back the way they came.

Four arrive from below, one per Serie C group plus the play-off winner: Vicenza from Group A, Arezzo from B, Benevento from C and Ascoli through the play-offs. For three of them it is a return: Vicenza, Benevento and Ascoli all have Serie A pasts and in some cases squads above the level they are leaving.

In between sits the usual block, and that is what makes this hard to call: Sampdoria and Palermo, two clubs with top-flight stadiums and above-average budgets, have gone seasons without solving promotion; Empoli, Catanzaro, Cesena and Modena hover near the top without quite breaking through. Thirty-eight rounds and only two safe places.

The twenty clubs play each other home and away: 38 rounds, 380 matches. The top two are promoted straight to Serie A with nothing left to argue. The third ticket comes out of a play-off among the sides finishing third to eighth, with a preliminary round, semi-finals and a two-legged final, in which the better-placed teams enter later and finish at home.

At the bottom, the last-placed club goes down directly along with the two above it, and 16th and 17th play a two-legged play-out to decide who joins them. And here is the rule to keep in mind when predicting: if a tie ends level on aggregate, it is not settled on away goals, nor in extra time, nor on penalties — the side that finished higher in the regular season goes through.

That clause turns every November point into a possible May advantage, and explains why in 2025/26 two of the three places at stake were resolved without anybody winning a match. For the pool the consequence is direct: the regular-season table is worth far more than it looks.