The Championship looks set for a revamp along with League One and Two and here is the latest
The first specifics of the SPFL plans to overhaul the lower leagues have been revealed with the gruelling Championship play-offs set to change under the new plans.
Plans to revamp the Premiership were torpedoed due to a lack of interest but Competitions Working Group have been looking at changes to the Championship as well as League One and Two after they found a number of clubs would be open to a shake-up.
The exact plans aren’t yet fully clear but, according to The Herald, they will involve expanding the current 10-team second tier to either 12 or 14 teams.
League One below it would then have 16 or 18 teams with League Two potentially reduced in size to eight to accommodate the expanded divisions above.
Intriguingly though the report also notes a significant change to the play-offs at the top of the Championship.
As it stands the teams who finish third and fourth in the second tier face a gruelling six games to earn promotion to the top flight – home and away against one another, home and away against the runners-up, before a two-leg final against the team who finishes 11th in the Premiership.
Ayr United, for instance, face Partick Thistle twice over the next three days. The winners of that will face Livingston twice next week, before the winners of that face two legs against the second-bottom top flight side.
But in a move likely to be popular with Championship clubs, new plans propose to half the first two of those ties to a single leg, with the team who finishes higher holding home advantage.
That would mean a single one-leg shootout between third and fourth, with the winner travelling to face the second-place side in a one-leg tie, with only the final between 11th and the Championship side held over two legs.
That comes after complaints from Championship clubs about the play-off schedule and would effectively ease the burden on the promotion hopefuls who fail to win the league automatically.
It’s part of a wider reconstruction package and the hope is that the move will help win the favour of the sides towards the top of the Championship who could realistically be involved in the playoffs come the end of the season.
It’s likely the overarching reconstruction plan will come into place from the 2026/27 season at the earliest.
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