Starligue 2026/27 (M)

The French championship starts in 1952 and for decades belongs to workers' and university clubs: SMUC Marseille won seven titles, US Ivry eight, almost all of them before France became a world power. The league changed scale when the national team did, in the nineties, and from there it produced two dynasties in a row.

The first was Montpellier's. With Nikola Karabatić coming out of its academy, the Languedoc club strung titles together through the 2000s and remains the most decorated in the country with fourteen; in 2018, with its stars long gone, it also won the Champions League from sixth place in its group, one of the widest gaps between budget and trophy European handball has seen.

The second began in 2012, when Qatari capital bought Paris Saint-Germain's handball side and turned it into a deep-squad project built on international signings. They have thirteen leagues and are one away from matching Montpellier's all-time mark. The difference between the dynasties is the margin: Montpellier's was fought out every spring; PSG's is settled in autumn.

PSG closed 2025/26 with 59 points out of 60: twenty-nine wins and a single draw in thirty rounds. It was their thirteenth title and twelfth in a row, a streak French handball no longer counts in trophies but in generations of players who have come and gone without knowing anything else.

HBC Nantes finished second on 55, four behind: the smallest gap PSG have conceded in years and proof that the Nantes project — academy players, a full arena and a wage bill far below the leader's — is still the only one that can keep pace for nine months. Montpellier were third on 43, already sixteen off the champions.

At the bottom, the Starligue keeps its hard rule: fifteenth and sixteenth go down to Proligue, with no play-off and no reprieve. With sixteen clubs and thirty rounds, that means half the table spends its whole season inside a three- or four-point margin, and a game lost in November can cost a club its place.

The season opens on 4 September 2026 and closes on 19 May 2027: sixteen clubs, 240 games, no playoff. The champion comes out of the table and nowhere else.

PSG defend with the chance to match Montpellier's fourteen leagues, which would be the first tie at the top of the all-time list in twenty years. Nantes are the logical challenger, and behind them sits a chasing pack deeper than almost anywhere else: Montpellier themselves, Aix, Saint-Raphaël, Chambéry, Dunkerque — champions in 2014, the last club outside the two dynasties to win it — and Toulouse.

The factor that shapes 2026/27 most is not in the table but in the calendar. Half the Starligue also plays in Europe, so there are weeks with a Wednesday and a Friday back to back, and that is where short-squad teams drop the points they miss in May. Before predicting an October fixture it is worth checking what that club played three days earlier: in a sport where sixty goals are scored a game, tiredness does not hide.

The Starligue has no final: the champion is whoever tops the table on 19 May, and with the title go the Champions League places the EHF allots to France. The positions behind hand out European League berths, and that is the real target for half the division: between third and seventh sit clubs with similar budgets and three or four points between them.

At the bottom the rule is blunt: fifteenth and sixteenth drop straight to Proligue. There is no play-off and no reprieve, so a newly promoted club plays thirty rounds knowing that two bad runs send it back down.

Outside the league sit the Coupe de France, a straight knockout, and the Trophée des Champions, which pits the league and cup winners against each other before the season starts. Neither affects the table, but both affect how squads arrive: the Starligue is one of the few European leagues where the top eight or nine all play continental handball, and in double weeks the favourite in a fixture is not always the one the table names.