FIFA approves new women’s match calendar – what it means for players and leagues

FIFA has approved a new women’s international match calendar for 2026-2029. While the calendar is still not optimized for maximum player rest and recovery, it does show some compromise from FIFA in acknowledging player workloads — specifically, reducing the number of overall international windows from six to five.

However, FIFA is also adding to the women’s calendar with the confirmation of the Women’s Club World Cup — the inaugural tournament to take place in January and February 2026 — and the CONCACAF W Champions Cup starting in August this year (Gotham FC, San Diego Wave, and Portland Thorns FC will feature in this edition). These events will add heavily to elite players’ loads when those players are already highly in demand between club and country.

While there was compromise, one group felt particularly left out of conversations. The Women’s Leagues Forum, which includes representatives from 16 women’s national leagues, expressed dissatisfaction in a letter to FIFA before the calendar’s release, requesting they be allowed to have input into the calendar due to its impact on global league schedules.

What are the main changes to the international match calendar?

There are three big logistical takeaways from the new calendar approach. FIFA removed an international window in September, streamlined the approach to the types of international windows and made them apply to every confederation at the same time, and ensured that there are at least 10 weeks between a major global tournament and the subsequent international window.

• Type I windows are nine days long, with “up to two matches permitted to be played by national teams.”
• Type II windows are 12 days long, with “up to three matches permitted to be played by national teams.”

Between the changes in the number and types of windows, the number of days that national teams can spend with their federations has been reduced slightly from 60 to 54 days. However, FIFA also elected to favor more type II windows, which are longer, hoping the time will allow for national teams to play more weekend matches.

The current schedule favors the shorter type I windows over the longer type II. In 2024, there are six international windows, plus a few specific ones that call out exemptions or specific dates applicable only to the Asian Football Confederation. In the new system starting in 2026, every confederation will have the same window type on the same days. It doesn’t fully address players’ demands for greater rest and recovery, but the longer windows should make it at least slightly easier if longer travel is involved.

The extended turnaround from tournaments to the next window will most directly impact the more active national teams; for example, the USWNT, who tend to schedule something in every window, had six weeks between being eliminated from the 2023 World Cup and returning to camp for their first post-tournament friendlies. In 2021, they had just over five weeks between the end of the Olympics and their next camp.

What does this mean for players?

Rest and recovery were the biggest priority for the players. Earlier this week, FIFPRO, the global players union, posted a first-person story from England and Barcelona’s Lucy Bronze, who said that she was in a strange way relieved for the COVID pandemic as it meant she’d have time to rest.

“We’re asking for proper rest periods and proper scheduling to end clashes,” Bronze said. “If the football calendar was organized in a way that those clashes didn’t have to happen, it would take a weight off players’ minds so we can focus on our game.”

According to sources briefed on the changes, FIFPRO requested mandatory rest periods during both the offseason (28 days) and season (14 days) for players as part of its ongoing discussions with FIFA on the calendar. No mandatory rest periods ended up in the final product, however, as FIFA declined the request — leaving it up to national teams and clubs to manage player load.

Eat, sleep, train, compete 🔄@LucyBronze reflects on the relentless demands faced by women’s footballers at the highest level.#ShineALight | @PFA pic.twitter.com/TwlUAPAUWZ

— FIFPRO (@FIFPRO) May 13, 2024

Thanks to the time difference between the U.S. and Thailand — the location of the FIFA Council meetings and FIFA Congress which will commence on Friday — the reaction has been muted so far. Most stakeholders that aren’t the confederations themselves had expected most of the changes to the calendar in some form, if not the exact details. Based on conversations The Athletic has had over the past two months about the upcoming changes to the schedule from FIFA, Wednesday’s result is less radical than earlier drafts. There will certainly be complaints, but the 2026-2029 calendar is unlikely to provoke any extreme backlash thanks to FIFA’s understanding it has to spread the wealth of frustration when it comes to a final product.

What is the Women’s Leagues Forum?

On Tuesday, the Women’s Leagues Forum — a collection of 16 women’s leagues and organizations, co-chaired by NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman — preemptively sent a letter to FIFA on the incoming international match calendar. The letter, obtained by The Athletic, states that the new organization requested a meeting with FIFA twice but FIFA never set one up.

The WLF seems largely concerned with the shift to favoring type II windows. For FIFA, it’s a win because it means more international games in favorable weekend time slots. For the leagues, that’s an obvious problem that hurts their bottom line.

“This recommendation would create a range of detrimental issues for national leagues including, to name a few, less weekends to play matches, more matches forced to mid-week, limited stadium availability, broadcast partner dissatisfaction, and federation/confederation & tournaments/champions-league clashes,” the letter reads. “Furthermore, the health of elite/top-end players is put at risk with this calendar given the heavy load of matches they will need to play, particularly in light of increasing player injuries.”

Despite the organization’s ask that “FIFA not make any hasty decisions at their upcoming council,” that’s exactly what has happened. In terms of timing, the coalition of women’s professional leagues may have simply aligned too late to influence FIFA’s process, whether that was with FIFA directly or by going through their respective confederations.

Is there an ideal international match calendar?

Given how many stakeholders there are, scheduling is always a Herculean task. FIFA leans heavily on the regional confederations for input into the calendar, with the individual country federations next in line. Domestic leagues don’t have a voice at the table, which can leave them frustrated with a calendar that may be at odds with their own needs. But the leagues also have differing demands, which makes it impossible to satisfy everyone equally.

The most ideal approach to an international calendar would be a player-centric model. For example, the mandatory rest periods recommended by FIFPRO are considered first for the calendar followed by dates around those rest periods. FIFA is highly unlikely to seek to satisfy the players first, instead maintaining a top-down approach to prioritize other stakeholders. FIFA doesn’t just want to keep the confederations happy, but they also consider windows that appeal to potential broadcasting partners.

“The Women’s International Match Calendar and the subsequent amendments to our regulations represent an important milestone in our pledge to take the women’s game to the next level by enhancing competitiveness across the world, particularly in those regions where women’s football is less developed and protecting the well-being of the players. Having agreed the calendar well in advance will be beneficial for planning purposes,” FIFA President Gianni Infantino said during the FIFA Council meeting. “We would like to thank all the confederations and other stakeholders for their efforts and commitment towards our common goal.”

On the women’s side, conditions vary so much between leagues and federations that some players may want more opportunities to come into national team camps and access those resources, while others would be overburdened.

“The schedule predominantly gets spoken about with too many games because there’s a high group of players that who are maybe in the limelight a little bit more as well, but then there’s the players at the other end who, they could go months without games and then (be) expected to play at a high level,” Bronze said. “There’s a huge differential between the underloaded players and the players that are probably high-use players.”

What does this mean for the NWSL?

The NWSL will face largely the same challenges it’s always faced working around the international calendar, especially while up against major summer tournaments. Looking ahead to 2027 especially, where FIFA has double-stacked a Type I international window directly ahead of the mandatory release date for the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup, NWSL clubs will be without tournament-bound international players for the entirety of June.

“We are thinking about it through the lens of how we make sure we’re actually making decisions from a player welfare perspective,” Berman told The Athletic in March. “The players are getting squeezed.”

Dropping the September window is favorable for the league and allows for greater time between the conclusion of a summer tournament and the next set of international games. That squeeze on the player stays for now, though, and it’s up to the NWSL to adapt and overcome through 2029.

(Top photo: Apinya Rittipo/FIFA via Getty Images)