The Championship’s first derby weekend of the season puts two long-standing rivalries back on the schedule. Millwall host West Ham at The Den on Saturday lunchtime (12:30 BST), while Wolves welcome West Bromwich Albion to Molineux on Sunday (12:00 BST). Promotion and relegation have reshaped the division, bringing several fierce local contests back into the same league.
Millwall against West Ham is one of the most hostile rivalries in English football and will be renewed for the first time in almost 15 years. Known as the Dockers Derby because of the clubs’ roots in London’s shipyards, the rivalry dates back to 1899, when Millwall Athletic won 2-1 at West Ham in the FA Cup. They have met 60 times in total, but only seven of those meetings have come in the past 33 years. The last meeting at The Den was a goalless draw 15 years ago this week.
A 2009 cup fixture between the sides spilled over into trouble on and off the pitch. BBC Radio London’s Nick Godwin said the scenes left a scar on football in the city. He added that London derbies generally run by their own rules, but Millwall against West Ham operates on a different level and walks a tightrope whenever and wherever it is played.
Their only season in the same league in the past 22 years was 2011-12. They drew at The Den in September before West Ham won 2-1 at Upton Park the following February on their way to promotion back to the Premier League. This is the second longest wait for a meeting in the 127-year history of the rivalry, behind only the 31-year gap before a second-tier match in 1978. West Ham have not won in Bermondsey since December 1988 at the old Den, with Millwall winning three and drawing two of the five home meetings since. The return fixture is set for February at the London Stadium. When the clubs last met, nearly six months before the London Olympics began, the London Stadium had yet to hold an event. That defeat for Millwall ended their seven-match unbeaten league streak against West Ham, a run that had lasted almost 21 years to the day.
Wolves and West Bromwich Albion renew the Black Country derby on Sunday at Molineux. The rivalry has lasted more than 140 years, and the 164th senior meeting between the sides will be the first since an FA Cup fourth-round tie in January 2024, when then Premier League Wolves won 2-0 at The Hawthorns. That game was interrupted for 38 minutes because of crowd trouble, which later led to West Brom being fined by the Football Association.
The clubs are original members of the Football League, contested the first ever local derby in the competition, and are separated by less than nine miles. They have spent only one season in the same division in 15 years, the Covid-hit Premier League campaign when both 2021 meetings were played behind closed doors. BBC Radio WM’s Wolves commentator Mike Taylor said two silver linings for Wolves fans when the club was relegated were no longer being exposed to VAR and the return of the Black Country derby. He said the fixture could give Wolves a huge injection of positive energy if they win, and that the inverse is also true. For some years, Taylor added, Wolves had been able to look down from the Premier League at Albion, and losing to them now on the same level would make the loss of that status harder to accept.
The last league game between Wolves and West Brom in front of fans was a 5-1 win for Albion at Molineux in February 2012. West Brom have won six of their past eight visits to Wolverhampton across the past 25 years in all competitions, including a 3-2 win in the 2007 Championship play-off semi-final. Albion lost only three of 23 meetings before the FA Cup defeat last time out and have won 11 more than Wolves over the course of the rivalry. The rivalry is so intense that it has led Wolves to change their walkout music at Molineux. BBC Radio WM’s Albion commentator Steve Hermon said both clubs have yo-yoed between the second tier and the Premier League, leaving just six league meetings in the past 17 years, but the hatred between blue and white and old gold has not waned. He described the rivalry as underrated nationally and said the atmosphere is rabid and can boil over, with the hope that the talking point is what happens on the pitch.
Other derbies are also back in the Championship. Burnley’s relegation from the Premier League and Bolton’s promotion from League One mean there are Lancashire derbies to look forward to with Blackburn and Preston also in the second tier. The four clubs fit within a 20-mile wide cap and made up a third of the original 12 members of the Football League. Blackburn and Burnley resume the East Lancashire rivalry in late November after a year off, with the return game in early February. Burnley and Bolton meet for the first time in nearly 11 years on Boxing Day; Bolton have won just one of the past seven meetings, losing five, after being unbeaten in the rivalry across nine games over 22 years prior to that. Bolton host Blackburn on 5 December, the same weekend Burnley host Preston. Bolton are top of the Lancashire table so far this season after a 2-1 home win over Preston on the opening day. They make the return trip to Deepdale in March, the first of three away Lancashire derbies in 14 days, during which Preston also entertain Burnley.
The south Wales derby is back following Cardiff’s promotion to the Championship at the first attempt last season. Cardiff head to Swansea at the end of November before the return fixture in the capital in mid-March. The rivalry was born in Swansea’s first competitive fixture in 1912. Cardiff won the last encounter 3-0 in January 2025, a rare bright spot on their path to relegation, while Swansea’s last win came in March 2024. Swansea did the double-double for the first time in the rivalry’s history in 2021-22 and 2022-23.