As much as we’d love a truly balanced AFL fixture, it’s just not practical – playing everyone once is too few games, and playing everyone twice is way too many.
So instead the league attempts to equalise the competition by putting its finger on the scale when it creates the yearly draw.
With 18 teams playing 23 games across 25 weeks, all clubs must play six opponents twice, and these are their ‘double-up’ opponents. To determine these, the AFL breaks up the ladder into a trio of six-team brackets (including finals results), and teams are drawn against bracket colleagues more often.
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Rather than having hard-and-fast rules, the AFL has added “flexibility” (per the league website) by allowing clubs to play between two and four games against teams in their bracket, and between one and two games against teams from other brackets.
And this has given the league the ability to make some teams draws’ harder than ever – for example, Collingwood and Geelong have both copped four games against fellow members of last season’s top six, while North Melbourne enjoys four games against fellow members of last season’s bottom six.
So it’s time for Foxfooty.com.au to analyse every team’s fixture based on the double-ups, using those opponents’ 2025 percentages (the better metric of team performance compared to pure win-loss record or ladder position).
And before you say anything about this being pointless because you can’t predict the ladder – just look back at history.
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Last year said Brisbane, Port Adelaide and Collingwood would have the three hardest draws, in that order; they did. We also said Carlton and Richmond would have two of the three easiest draws; they did.
And this isn’t a one-year thing. There will always be a few teams who end up getting a harder or easier run than expected (we’re looking at you, Geelong 2025) but broadly speaking this analysis will be a strong guide. So let’s get into it.
2026 AFL FIXTURE BRACKETS (Based on 2025 ladder & finals)
Top six: Brisbane Lions, Geelong, Collingwood, Hawthorn, Adelaide Crows, Gold Coast Suns
Middle six: GWS Giants, Fremantle, Western Bulldogs, Sydney Swans, Carlton, St Kilda
Bottom six: Port Adelaide, Melbourne, Essendon, North Melbourne, Richmond, West Coast Eagles
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EVERY TEAM’S 2026 DOUBLE-UP OPPONENTS
Adelaide Crows: Collingwood, Fremantle, Geelong, Port Adelaide, Richmond, Western Bulldogs (x2 top six, x2 middle six, x2 bottom six)
Brisbane Lions: Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon, Geelong, Gold Coast Suns, Sydney Swans (x3 top six, x2 middle six, x1 bottom six)
Carlton: Brisbane Lions, Collingwood, Fremantle, Richmond, St Kilda, Western Bulldogs (x2 top six, x3 middle six, x1 bottom six)
Collingwood: Adelaide Crows, Brisbane Lions, Carlton, Geelong, Hawthorn, West Coast Eagles (x4 top six, x1 middle six, x1 bottom six)
Essendon: Brisbane Lions, GWS Giants, Hawthorn, Melbourne, North Melbourne, Port Adelaide (x2 top six, x1 middle six, x3 bottom six)
Fremantle: Adelaide Crows, Carlton, Geelong, Melbourne, West Coast Eagles, Western Bulldogs (x2 top six, x2 middle six, x2 bottom six)
Geelong: Adelaide Crows, Brisbane Lions, Collingwood, Fremantle, Gold Coast Suns, North Melbourne (x4 top six, x1 middle six, x1 bottom six)
Gold Coast Suns: Brisbane Lions, Geelong, GWS Giants, Hawthorn, Melbourne, St Kilda (x3 top six, x2 middle six, x1 bottom six)
GWS Giants: Essendon, Gold Coast Suns, Hawthorn, St Kilda, Sydney Swans, West Coast Eagles (x2 top six, x3 middle six, x1 bottom six)
Hawthorn: Collingwood, Essendon, Gold Coast Suns, GWS Giants, Melbourne, Western Bulldogs (x2 top six, x2 middle six, x2 bottom six)
Melbourne: Essendon, Fremantle, Gold Coast Suns, Hawthorn, Richmond, Western Bulldogs (x2 top six, x2 middle six, x2 bottom six)
North Melbourne: Essendon, Geelong, Port Adelaide, Richmond, Sydney Swans, West Coast Eagles (x1 top six, x1 middle six, x4 bottom six)
Port Adelaide: Adelaide Crows, Essendon, North Melbourne, St Kilda, Sydney Swans, West Coast Eagles (x1 top six, x2 middle six, x3 bottom six)
Richmond: Adelaide Crows, Carlton, Melbourne, North Melbourne, St Kilda, West Coast Eagles (x1 top six, x2 middle six, x3 bottom six)
St Kilda: Carlton, Gold Coast Suns, GWS Giants, Port Adelaide, Richmond, Sydney Swans (x1 top six, x3 middle six, x2 bottom six)
Sydney Swans: Brisbane Lions, GWS Giants, North Melbourne, Port Adelaide, St Kilda, Western Bulldogs (x1 top six, x3 middle six, x2 bottom six)
West Coast Eagles: Collingwood, Fremantle, GWS Giants, North Melbourne, Port Adelaide, Richmond (x1 top six, x2 middle six, x3 bottom six)
Western Bulldogs: Adelaide Crows, Carlton, Fremantle, Hawthorn, Melbourne, Sydney Swans (x2 top six, x3 middle six, x1 bottom six)
See who your side plays twice in 2026.Source: FOX SPORTS
AFL 2026 FIXTURE DIFFICULTY
Based on the 2025 percentage of the teams they play twice in 2026
(Hardest) 1. Geelong
2. Gold Coast Suns
3. Collingwood
4. Fremantle
5. Hawthorn
6. Western Bulldogs
7. Adelaide Crows
8. Brisbane Lions
9. Carlton
10. Melbourne
11. Sydney Swans
12. Essendon
13. St Kilda
14. West Coast Eagles
15. GWS Giants
16. Richmond
17. Port Adelaide
(Easiest) 18. North Melbourne
AFL 2026 fixture difficulty from hardest to easiest.Source: FOX SPORTS
BEFORE THE WINNERS AND LOSERS, A FEW SIDE NOTES…
– Essendon and Melbourne will play each other twice for the first time since 2005.
– Carlton and Sydney do NOT play each other twice, meaning Charlie Curnow won’t play in front of Blues fans in Melbourne in 2026 (unless it’s a final).
Given they only play in Opening Round, it means they won’t even play each other in an actually numbered round.
– Fans who want a simple fixture where everyone plays each other once before the repeats won’t be happy; Collingwood is the only team that gets to play every other side once before a repeat meeting.
Three games in Round 24 – Adelaide-GWS, Geelong-Richmond and West Coast-Hawthorn – are first-time meetings for the season.
Meanwhile the Cats, Hawks and Kangaroos bizarrely all play four teams twice before having faced five other sides even once.
WINNERS
GWS Giants
We’ll give some credit to the AFL for looking at the Giants’ percentage, not their win-loss record, which always suggested they were one of the weaker 2025 finalists.
But that doesn’t quite explain why they’ve been given a draw that’s this much easier than the rest of the top nine.
Remember, we just spent months talking about how the top nine teams were better than everyone else. Well, eight of those teams copped the eight hardest 2026 draws… and then there’s GWS with the fourth-easiest?!
As we’ll discuss further below, the Giants play fewer 2025 finalists twice (two, Gold Coast and Hawthorn) than wooden spooners West Coast do (three), which doesn’t make any sense.
The Giants’ middle-six opponents, Sydney and St Kilda, are admittedly likely to improve due to health and/or recruiting. This draw could get harder than it sounds right now.
But let’s put it like this – GWS finished fifth in the home and away season, but doesn’t play any of the top-four teams twice. That seems wrong.
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North Melbourne
Alastair Clarkson needs to finally get the Kangaroos going and this is the perfect opportunity for him to do so.
North Melbourne has its four easiest possible double-ups; they had the AFL’s fourth-worst percentage in 2025, and play the three teams below them (Essendon, Richmond, West Coast) plus the fifth-worst (Port Adelaide) twice.
The only finalist the Kangaroos play twice is Geelong, while Sydney is tougher than the pure numbers suggest but still only finished 10th last year.
The important part is the eight games against the Bombers, Tigers, Eagles and Power. That’s eight genuinely winnable contests – in a year where they probably need to win eight or more games to keep the critics away.
Port Adelaide
A few teams have used a 13th-place finish to catapult back into the finals over the last decade – most notably Richmond and Collingwood in the late 2010s.
The Power could be the latest, as while their percentage was pretty poor in 2025, in reality they just had a weird tendency to be blown out a bit too often.
Generally speaking this should be a pretty OK-to-average team in 2026, given how much elite young talent they still have, and this draw could be the difference between them sneaking into a wildcard final and missing the new top 10.
A year after copping the game’s second-hardest draw, the Power will enjoy the second-easiest, only drawing the Crows as a 2025 finalist they have to play twice.
While St Kilda and Sydney will be hoping to improve, they’re still middle six teams who the Power should be hopeful of beating at home, while there’s every chance they can win six out of six games against Essendon, North Melbourne and West Coast.
That’s eight very realistic wins on the board, which is a pretty good base to build from.
Adelaide, Hawthorn and Fremantle
We know what the numbers say but these three teams are feeling the Bulldogs effect. (This is why you read the article for the full explanation, folks!)
Their draws are easier than the numbers claim because they play the Dogs twice – a team that thrashed bad teams to build an enormous percentage but couldn’t beat the best.
We’d still say the Dogs are a tricky opponent, because we believe that to some degree their woeful record against top-eight sides was unfortunate (and they should be good again in 2026), but they weren’t the third-best team of the 2025 season (as their percentage suggests).
Instead, look at the brackets of the teams these three play – two top-six, two middle-six, two bottom-six. That’s pretty reasonable when you consider sides like Collingwood and Geelong are copping four top-six games.
In particular the Crows finished on top of the ladder – and yet get to face a pair of bottom-six teams twice, in Port Adelaide and Richmond.
It would’ve surely been more logical to have Port Adelaide be the Crows’ lone bottom-six opponent.
Meanwhile the Hawks get Essendon (thanks for the trade request, Zach) and Melbourne twice, while the Dockers get Melbourne as well as the yearly double-up with West Coast.
Assuming this is a more normal season, these easier double-up games could be the difference between these teams winning 13 or 14 games, or winning 15 or 16 (and making the top four).
Collingwood, Geelong and West Coast are the big losers from the double-up assignments.Source: FOX SPORTS
LOSERS
Geelong
You can’t say the AFL ignores every complaint.
They heard everyone’s discontent about Geelong’s 2025 fixture and have decided to punish them for their good fortune – when Port Adelaide and Essendon’s declines gave the Cats double-ups against four bottom-seven sides (also Richmond and St Kilda).
That draw, and Brisbane’s much harder one, was one of the key reasons Geelong hosted those two sides’ qualifying final meeting. And the league appears to be making amends.
While they still have other advantages like their home ground, the Cats’ draw is brutal in terms of double-ups, as they cop four top-six teams (Adelaide, Brisbane, Collingwood, Gold Coast) plus Fremantle.
To be clear, those are the teams who finished 1st, 3rd, 4th, 6th and 7th after the home and away season. All of them should be good again in 2026, and the Cats cop all of them in genuine away games (well, they never play Collingwood at home).
The Cats at least get North Melbourne twice too – they’ve won their last 14 meetings in the series – but if Chris Scott guides this group to another top-four finish it will be fully on merit.
Collingwood
The league might’ve listened to them about not travelling for Opening Round – a little odd, that – but they’ve paid them back with four games against top-six opponents.
Much like the Cats, the Pies will need to take care of business against the best repeatedly, facing Adelaide, Brisbane, Geelong and Hawthorn twice.
Only because the Magpies get one-win West Coast twice next year, and Carlton instead of Fremantle, is their draw easier than Geelong’s.
West Coast Eagles
Sorry, did someone the Eagles annoy the wrong person at an AFL function this year? Because why’d they cop this?
Bizarrely after winning just one game, West Coast cops double-ups against THREE 2025 finalists – though we can kinda explain why.
The wooden spooners face Collingwood, Fremantle and GWS as double-ups, with the latter two considered part of the middle 7th-12th bracket because they lost their elimination finals.
That is a bit simplistic, though. The Dockers and Giants hosted those finals – they each finished in the top six of the ladder with a whopping 16 wins in the home and away season.
They were both a little fortunate to produce those records but that’s subjective; 16 wins has to mean something, especially when we’re considering the fixture of a team that won one game last year.
The Giants are a perfect contrast here – they play fewer 2025 finalists twice than the Eagles do! And the Giants MADE the finals!
Put simply, there’s no reason West Coast should have a harder fixture than GWS.
It’s not going to be reason the Eagles miss the finals – that should happen regardless – but this genuinely seems like a mistake.
Essendon, kinda
It’s almost like the Bombers are being punished for engaging in trade storylines with two top teams, because despite finishing in the bottom six, they draw Sam Draper’s Brisbane and Zach Merrett’s (in his dreams) Hawthorn twice each.
Maybe they should tell their players if they want to leave, it can only be to West Coast or North, for the good of their fixture?
