Fantasy Premier League tips: The ultimate FPL guide to beating your mates in 2026/27

Fantasy Premier League is one of the most competitive parts of the football season, so here's all you need to know to beat your mates.

Every year as a new Premier League season approaches, millions of football fans from across the world eagerly await the launch of the official fantasy game (FPL).

After launching with 76,284 managers during its debut 2002/03 season, more than 13 million people now play FPL each year, with the figure reaching new heights every season.

With that in mind, it's getting harder and harder to nail the right picks and fly up the overall leaderboard and, more importantly, beat your friends in private mini-leagues.

There are more than 500 footballers registered to play in the Premier League each season, so how do you know which players are the nailed-on to bag you points hauls each and which are traps that will waste your budget and have you banging your head up against a wall?

Lucky for you, SPORTbible has put together the ultimate guide to FPL to help make sure that you know everything needed to show off your elite ball knowledge and embarrass your friends.

But why listen to me? I've finished in the top 0.02% of all teams for the past two seasons, (32nd in 2024/25 and 1,940 in 2025/26) and these are the key rules that I considered each week.

Mohamed Salah scored the most FPL points in a season in 2017/18, with 303 points. (Image: Getty Images)

FPL basics explained

First and foremost, in order to do well in FPL you need to make sure you understand all of the rules to what can be at times a complicated game.

Each FPL manager starts with the exact same dilemma, build a squad of 15 players with a budget of £100million.

The 15-player squad will include 11 players to be played in your lineup each week, with four reserved for the bench.

This may tempt some to fill their bench with cheap players that allow you to fill your starting team with some big hitters, but benched players in FPL can sometimes be crucial should someone in your starting 11 unexpectedly not feature in a match.

In this scenario, the first player on your bench will automatically be subbed into your team, assuming they at least made an appearance in a Premier League fixture that week.

It's also important to know that there are rules in place for the 15 players that you can select when building your team.

The squad must include exactly two goalkeepers, five defenders, five midfielders and three forwards.

Crucially, you cannot select more than three players from any one Premier League club.

Throughout the season, FPL managers will be given one free transfer to use to adjust there team, selling a player to bring in another, with a maximum of five free transfers possible should you decide not to make a change in prior weeks.

Additional transfers are available for managers to use whenever they want, but any transfer made after exhausting your free transfers comes at the cost of four points from your score in the upcoming Gameweek.

Each week, you will also need to select a player to be your captain, with the player then scoring double points.

Alongside the captain, a vice-captain must be selected each week to score double points should your selected captain not make an appearance for the Gameweek.

FPL managers also get access to special featured called 'chips' which completely change how your team works either for one week or from when you play them.

Each of the four chips are available to be played twice per season, with the first set to be used between Gameweeks 1-19 before a fresh set becomes available for the second half of the campaign starting in Gameweek 20.

The chips are as follows:

Wildcard - Make unlimited, permanent transfers (including those already made in the Gameweek) without any point deductions.

Bench Boost - The points scored by your benched players are also included in your total for the Gameweek.

Free Hit - Make unlimited free transfers for a single Gameweek. After the Gameweek is over, your squad is returned to how it was before those unlimited moves were made

Triple Captain - Your captain points for the Gameweek are tripled instead of doubled.

Managers can only play one chip per Gameweek and must carefully decide when is the best time to make use of each of them.

Finally, anyone playing FPL must be aware that throughout the season player prices will change depending on how they perform in real life and how many managers are buying, or selling, players.

For example, in 2025//26 Manchester United's Bruno Fernandes saw the biggest price rise as he finished the season costing £10.4m, an increase of £1.9m from his starting price of just £8.5m.

Meanwhile Manchester City's Phil Foden saw the biggest decrease, dropping from £9.5m in Gameweek 1 all the way down to £8.0m come the end of the season.

How to score the most points in FPL

Now that you know the rules, how are you going to build a team to score the most points and take you to victory in your mini-leagues?

There are plenty of ways to score points in FPL, allowing managers to have a wide selection of options when putting together a team.

Of course, the most obvious ways to score points is for your players to score goals, with the total points awarded for a goal differing depending on the position of the goalscorer, with goalkeepers and defenders awarded more for finding the back of the net.

However, scoring goals isn't your main way of finding points with defenders, as clean sheets are the best route to securing weekly hauls with your players at the back.

But perhaps the most crucial thing to consider when building a team is the recently-introduced Defensive Contribution (DEFCON) points.

Introduced ahead of the 2025/26 season, DEFCONs reward players for key defensive actions including tackles won, interceptions, blocks, clearances and ball recoveries.

A player earns DEFCON points by reaching a threshold of defensive actions during a match, with the threshold for each position being slightly different (for example the DEFCON threshold for defenders is lower than midfielders or forwards)

Typically, centre-backs and defensive midfielders are the most likely to achieve DEFCON points each week, with those that can do so in every game typically outscoring many of the Premier League's biggest names.

It's important to note that players can also have points taken away due to negative actions such as own goals or bookings.

Here is all the ways to score, or have points taken away, in full:

For playing up to 60 minutes: 1

For playing 60 minutes or more (excluding stoppage time): 2

For each goal scored by a goalkeeper: 10

For each goal scored by a defender: 6

For each goal scored by a midfielder: 5

For each goal scored by a forward: 4

For each assist for a goal: 3

For a clean sheet by a goalkeeper or defender: 4

For a clean sheet by a midfielder: 1

For every 3 shots saved by a goalkeeper: 1

For each penalty save: 5

For 10 defensive contributions by a defender: 2

For 12 defensive contributions by a midfielder: 2

For 12 defensive contributions by a forward: 2

For each penalty miss: -2

Bonus points for the best players in a match: 1–3

For every 2 goals conceded by a goalkeeper or defender: -1

For each yellow card: -1

For each red card: -3

For each own goal: -2

READ MORE: FPL confirm major changes ahead of 2026/27 season launch with one that will change your mini league forever

Top tips for picking the best squad

The most important tip for FPL is a simple one, but one that's hard to follow, remove all biases that you may already have about players and teams in the Premier League.

For example, a Liverpool fan may not want to include Manchester United captain Fernandes in their FPL team, but the midfielder is consistently one of the highest scoring players in the game and therefore cannot be ignored across the 38-match season.

Another key thing to consider is player ownership, which can be viewed on both the FPL app and website.

Many of the most-owned players are typically picked selected for a reason, and are almost always worth your consideration.

But, simply following the crowd and picking highly-owned players is also a common trap managers fall into, as it's worth noting that these highly-owned players are much more liable to price falls should they be sold en masse due to poor performances.

Finally, it's always worth considering fixture difficulty throughout the season and using transfers to ensure that you always have the big hitters when they're playing some of the weaker sides in the league.

Managers can use the official FPL Fixture Difficulty Ratings (FDR) tool to plan ahead and see which teams and players have favourable, or challenging, fixtures coming up.