The expanded WSL has made 13th place a relegation battleground
The 14-team league sends 14th straight down and puts 13th into a playoff with a second-tier contender. The expansion also created a one-time promotion route that reached beyond the top two divisions.
Tom McMillan
When Birmingham City beat Charlton Athletic 1-0 on October 25, the two newly promoted sides were meeting in the Barclays Women’s Super League for the first time that season. The win was Birmingham’s first in the top flight that campaign, and its first top-flight victory in 1,631 days. In a standings capture from November 2, Birmingham had six points after eight matches; Charlton had none. Their early meeting shows what expansion looks like on the pitch: more clubs in the league, and new opponents navigating the top flight at different speeds.
The less obvious change is the pressure the expanded league puts on 13th place. The WSL now has 14 clubs for the first time, but its promotion and relegation rules make the second tier’s race matter beyond its champion: 14th goes down automatically, while 13th must face a contender from below.
That recurring route is different from the one-off arrangement WSL Football proposed to create the 14-team league. In its June 2025 expansion statement, the organization said clubs had voted, subject to approval by The FA Board, to expand from 12 teams. It proposed promoting the top two clubs in the second tier automatically, with a possible third place decided by a playoff between the third-placed second-tier side and 12th in the WSL. If the lower-division team won, the WSL’s 12th-placed club would also go down.
The change was designed to ripple below the top flight, too. WSL Football said the expansion would create extra vacancies in the second tier, to be filled by teams from the Northern and Southern Premier Divisions of the FA Women’s National League. Its 2025 statement said the method for those promotions, and any effects further down the pyramid, would be confirmed later. The immediate step to 14, then, was not simply two extra places: it opened a temporary route for as many as three second-tier clubs while creating openings below them.
For the ongoing system, WSL Football’s 2026-27 fixture announcement spells out a different contest. The second-tier champion replaces the WSL’s 14th-placed club automatically. The second- and third-placed teams in the second tier first meet in a pre-qualifying match; the winner then plays 13th in the WSL for a place in the top flight. That gives the league two direct routes for upward movement and makes the position just above automatic relegation a possible playoff place, not a safe finish.
The new format’s first weeks offered a modest illustration of the difference between getting into the league and settling there. WSL Football’s Matchweek 7 roundup reported Birmingham’s first win at the seventh attempt and Charlton’s seventh straight league defeat. The later standings capture listed the clubs on six and zero points respectively after eight matches. Those figures show contrasting starts, not what either team’s season will become.
WSL Football CEO Nikki Doucet said the expansion was intended to benefit the whole pyramid and, in the organization’s words, “raise minimum standards, create distinction and incentivise investment across the board.” The published rules give that pyramid-wide ambition a concrete mechanism: clubs can move through automatic promotion, playoffs and relegation across multiple levels. But the rules establish routes, not their effects. The early table cannot show whether the expansion has raised standards or encouraged investment; those claims will need evidence beyond the fact that more clubs have entered the top flight.
