Law changes for the new Premier League season

Arsenal's Martin Odegaard (left) celebrates. Pic: Adam Davy/PA Wire.

The 2026-27 Premier League season kicks off on Friday night when champions Arsenal take on newly-promoted Coventry.

Here, we look at the law changes we will see – and some alterations we saw at the World Cup which will not be used in English football.

Time-wasting 

The eight-second rule for goal kicks out of hand was well received last season and efforts to cut time-wasting and disruption have now been applied to other areas of the game.

Referees have been instructed to start a five-second countdown where they believe players are taking too long over throw-ins and dead-ball goal kicks – if the five-second limit is exceeded throw-ins are reversed and a goal kick becomes a corner.

Player injuries which force a stoppage in play will require the player to leave the field for at least one minute – up from 30 seconds. This will not apply where the challenge which led to the injury resulted in a yellow or red card, or in other exceptional circumstances.

English football is also trialling an initiative designed to stop teams from taking tactical timeouts when goalkeepers go down claiming injury. Where this happens, a manager must immediately nominate an outfield player who will come off for at least one minute after play restarts.

Substitutions will be limited to 10 seconds – where a player takes longer than that to come off, his replacement will be denied entry to the field for a minimum of one further minute.

Second yellow cards 

VARs will now also be able to check second yellow cards and overturn them if they have clearly been shown in error. They cannot intervene to suggest a second yellow card is awarded when not given on-field, however.

Set-pieces 

VARs can now intervene where an attacking foul is spotted prior to a set-piece being taken which leads to a goal, a penalty or a disciplinary sanction, and order that the set-piece be retaken.

Premier League football principles 

In addition to the laws of the game that apply worldwide, the league has its own framework governing how it wants its officials to interpret those laws. That includes maintaining a high threshold for penalising challenges – though referees’ chief Howard Webb does want officials to take a firmer stand on grappling and holding at set-pieces.

The league also wants to maintain a high bar for VAR intervention – there were 0.28 interventions per match in the Premier League last season, compared to 0.51 in the Champions League.

And what we won’t see 

FIFA used the mistaken identity VAR protocol to remove yellow cards for fouls and reassign them to players for diving at the World Cup – most controversially in showing a second yellow to Switzerland’s Breel Embolo in the quarter-final against Argentina. The game’s lawmakers, the International Football Association Board (IFAB) has since clarified that the offence itself cannot be reviewed or changed under the protocol, only the identity of the offender.

The controversial three-minute hydration breaks will also not feature – Premier League matches will only pause for a cooling break where the temperature before kick-off exceeds 30 degrees Celsius.

The Premier League is also not taking up the option for VARs to review the awarding of corners, or for red cards to be shown to players who cover their mouth when confronting an opponent.

Any other business?

In a push for further transparency, selected conversations between referees and players recorded on Ref Cam will now feature in match broadcasts. Fans will also be able to see judgements from the Key Match Incidents (KMI) Panel, which assesses whether refs and VARs got the big calls right. The panel’s findings will now be published around 10 days after each match round on the Premier League’s website.

The PL Match Centre account on X will now also feature direct quotes from referees and VARs to clarify big decisions and overturns.