The Women’s Super League is facing major disruption next season, 2027-28, because of the inaugural Women’s Club World Cup, with Arsenal and Chelsea likely to be absent from domestic competition for up to a month. The tournament is set to be awarded to the United States, and its proposed dates of 5-30 January would clash directly with the WSL. Transatlantic travel would add further problems for European clubs.
FIFA has yet to confirm the qualification criteria for the Club World Cup, but Arsenal are guaranteed to be involved as 2025 Champions League winners. Chelsea are likely to join them, although they would lose their place if Manchester City win this season’s Champions League. FIFA plans to cap the number of participants from each country at two, so a City triumph would cost Chelsea their spot.
UEFA is set to be granted six places in the 16-team competition, with five clubs qualifying automatically and one taking part in a six-team play-in tournament beforehand. The process still has to be ratified by FIFA Council, but it is understood UEFA’s spots will go to the Champions League winners between 2023 and 2027 and be topped up by the highest-ranked clubs in UEFA’s Champions League coefficient table.
Chelsea are currently third in UEFA’s coefficient table for the current four-year cycle, behind Barcelona and Lyon and 17 points clear of fourth-placed Bayern Munich, a gap that cannot be caught. On the current rankings, Bayern and Wolfsburg are next in line to qualify, although Wolfsburg have not qualified for this season’s Champions League and will not add further points, meaning they are likely to be overhauled by Real Madrid or Paris Saint-Germain.
Based on this season’s schedule, an extended run in the Club World Cup would see Arsenal and Chelsea miss up to four WSL match rounds plus the fourth round of the FA Cup. That would play havoc with the fixture list and create major congestion at the end of the season, as well as making the campaign lopsided.
The WSL declined to comment because it has yet to be told of FIFA’s plans for the tournament, but sources accepted the impact is likely to prove challenging and affect a number of match rounds. The league has a winter break, scheduled for 21 December to 10 January this season. Although that could be pushed back slightly, aligning it with the Club World Cup is not viewed as practical because of the congested calendar.
Moving the winter break would also create a backlog of WSL fixtures during the period when the Champions League knockout stage begins at the start of February. Fixture congestion is a growing area of concern in the women’s game, and 2028 will be particularly problematic because the Olympic football tournament takes place in Los Angeles in August, just before the start of the European domestic season.
The International Olympic Committee has expanded women’s football to 16 nations at the 2028 Games, and senior internationals are permitted to take part, unlike the men’s version, which is restricted to under-23 players with three overage exceptions. FIFA’s decision to impose the Club World Cup in the middle of the European season has exacerbated the problem. Earlier this year, European Leagues, a lobby group, extended its legal complaint to the European Commission about the world governing body’s alleged “abuse of power and dominant position” to include the women’s game.