2025–26 Russian Premier League

The 2025–26 Russian Premier League (known as the Mir Russian Premier League, also written as Mir Russian Premier Liga for sponsorship reasons) is the 34th season of the premier football competition in Russia since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the 24th under the current Russian Premier League name. It started on 18 July 2025 and the regular season will end on 17 May 2026, followed by the relegation play-offs. The season had a winter break after 7 December until 27 February 2026.

The relegation and promotion team movement was particularly complicated in this offseason. At the conclusion of the previous season, Orenburg and Fakel Voronezh were relegated directly from the Premier League, both after three seasons in the top tier. Top two teams of the Russian First League, Baltika Kaliningrad and Torpedo Moscow were promoted and returned to the Premier League after one and two seasons in the second tier, respectively. In the RPL/RFL play-offs, Premier League club Akhmat Grozny defeated Ural Yekaterinburg and remained in the league, while Pari Nizhny Novgorod lost to Sochi, Sochi returned to the Premier League after one season in the lower level.

Khimki, which finished the RPL season outside of relegation zone, were relegated administratively by the Russian Football Union due to lack of financial guarantees. After several weeks of uncertainty, on 16 June 2025 Khimki were officially replaced by Pari Nizhny Novgorod, which was kept in the league despite losing in the play-offs.

In late June, an investigation was opened into Sochi's player Vladimir Pisarsky, who was betting on his team's games. On 3 July 2025, he was banned from football for at least a year, however, the club was not punished as there was no evidence that he influenced the games outcomes to improve his betting results.

On 19 June 2025, Torpedo Moscow's co-owner Leonid Sobolev and general director Valeri Skorodumov were arrested on suspicion of attempting to bribe referee Maksim Perezva. They are suspected of offering Perezva 6,000,000 rubles (approximately 66,000 euros) for giving Torpedo advantage in three First League games from March 2025 to May 2025 in which he was expected to be the referee, Perezva reported their offer to the police. The investigators searched their offices and homes, confiscating communication devices and documents. Russian Football Union opened their own investigation. On 8 July 2025, referee Bogdan Golovko, who did not award a penalty kick against Torpedo on the last day of the 2024–25 season (a decision later deemed incorrect by the official RFU refereeing review commission) was also arrested on the charge of "illegally influencing an official sporting event". On 10 July 2025, eight days before the season was scheduled to begin, RFU excluded Torpedo from the Premier League, banned Skorodumov and Sobolev from football activity (for 10 and 5 years respectively) and fined Torpedo 5 million rubles (approximately 55,000 euros). The league president Aleksandr Alayev commented that the decision about Torpedo's replacement (if any) will be made by the Russian Football Union. On the next day, RFU decided to allow Orenburg to remain in the Premier League and keep Torpedo in the First League for the 2025–26 season.

The 16 teams play a round-robin tournament whereby each team plays each one of the other teams twice, once at home and once away, for a total of 240 matches with each team playing 30.

The season started on 18 July. The last games before the winter break will be played on 8 December; the spring part of the season will begin on 27 February and the last games will be played on 17 May.

For the purpose of determining First League positions for the following considerations, the teams that do not pass 2026–27 RPL licensing or drop out of 2026–27 season for any other reason, or the teams that finished lower than 6th place in First League standings will not be considered. For example, if the teams that finished 1st, 3rd and 4th in the First League standings fail licensing, the team that finished 2nd will be considered the 1st-placed team, the team that finished 5th will be considered the 2nd-placed team, and the team that finished 6th will be considered the 3rd-placed team. There would be no designated 4th-placed team in this scenario.

The teams that finish 15th and 16th will be relegated to the 2026–27 First League, while the top two in that league will be promoted to the Premier League for the 2026–27 season.

The 13th and 14th Premier League teams will play the 4th and 3rd 2025–26 First League teams respectively in two (home-and-away) playoff games, with penalty shootout in effect if necessary. The winners will secure Premier League spots for the 2026–27 season. If only one First League team is eligible for the play-offs (as in the example scenario above), that team will play the 14th-placed RPL team in playoffs, with the winners securing the Premier League spot, and the 13th RPL team will remain in the league. If none of the First League teams are eligible for the play-offs, they will not be held and 13th and 14th-placed RPL teams will remain in the league. If any of the teams are unable to participate in the season after the play-offs have been concluded, or there are not enough teams that pass licensing to follow the above procedures, the replacement will be chosen by the Russian Football Union in consultation with RPL and FNL.

Any team can be excluded from the Premier League during the season for the following reasons: a) using counterfeit documents or providing inaccurate information to the league; b) not arriving to the game on more than one occasion; c) match fixing. Such a team is automatically relegated and is not replaced during the season, and only one additional team (that gains the least amount of points at the end of the season) is directly relegated. If the excluded team had played fewer than 15 games at the time of exclusion, all its results would be annulled and would not count for the standings. If the excluded team had played at least 15 games at the time of exclusion, all their remaining opponents would be awarded a victory without effect on their goal difference, the same would retroactively apply to the results of the second-half-of-the-season games such a team would have already played at the time of their exclusion, the results of the first 15 games of this team would remain in place and count for standings.

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• Official website
• https://www.championat.com/football/_russiapl.html