Fantasy Premier League has a second, far less familiar version: FPL Draft. It runs on different rules from the game you know — there are no prices, no budget and no captain, and every player can be owned by only one manager in your league.
This guide covers the 2026/27 rules, checked directly against the official game settings, and adds something the rulebook does not give you: a calculation of which positions actually punish you for waiting, based on our own player ratings.
The big difference: a player belongs to you alone
In classic FPL everyone can own Haaland, and most people do. In Draft, one player equals one manager. If somebody takes Haaland before your turn, he is unavailable to you for the rest of the season — unless you trade for him or that manager drops him.
Everything else follows from that:
- No prices, no £100m budget. Nobody costs anything. Only the picking order matters.
- No transfers in the familiar sense — you change players through waivers and free agents.
- No captain. The most surprising difference; more on it below.
- No chips. No Wildcard, no Bench Boost, no Free Hit. The whole chip strategy applies to classic FPL only.
- Small leagues. Two to sixteen managers, eight by default. You play against friends, not eight million strangers.
How the draft itself runs
The draft is the session where managers take turns picking players until everyone has a 15-man squad.
Picking order
The league administrator sets it. It can be random or, in a league carried over from last season, reversed by the table: bottom picks first, the champion picks last.
The snake format
The order reverses every round. If round one runs A, B, C, D, round two runs D, C, B, A. That gives whoever picks last two selections back to back, which partly offsets missing out in round one.
You do not have to be there
Before the draft you build a watchlist — your own ranking of players by position. If you miss your turn, the system picks from it automatically. Without one it falls back on the game’s default rankings, built from last season’s points. That is a safety net, not a strategy; build the list.
Timing
A private league draft must happen before the Gameweek 1 deadline — this season, Friday 21 August at 18:30 UK time. Public leagues start automatically once they fill up.
Squad and formation
Exactly as in classic FPL:
- 15 players: 2 goalkeepers, 5 defenders, 5 midfielders, 3 forwards.
- 11 start, the rest sit on the bench.
- Formation: always 1 goalkeeper, 3 to 5 defenders, 2 to 5 midfielders, 1 to 3 forwards.
There is no captain — and it changes everything
Draft has no captain and no vice-captain. Nothing gets doubled.
In classic FPL the armband drives a large share of the gap between managers — a double Haaland can be a dozen points in a single week. That lever does not exist here. All that counts is who is in your squad and who you start.
The practical consequence: in Draft, a balanced squad beats a squad built around one star. Nothing will squeeze double value out of that star, and you still have eleven slots to fill.
Scoring
No surprises — scoring is identical to classic FPL, including this season’s addition of defensive contribution points.
- Appearance: 1 point up to 59 minutes, 2 points from 60.
- Goal: goalkeeper 10, defender 6, midfielder 5, forward 4.
- Assist: 3 points, whatever the position.
- Clean sheet: goalkeeper and defender 4, midfielder 1, forward none.
- Defensive contribution: 2 points — defenders for 10 defensive actions in a match, midfielders and forwards for 12. Goalkeepers do not get it.
- Goals conceded: −1 for every two, for goalkeepers and defenders.
- Saves: 1 point per three.
- Penalties: saved 5, missed −2.
- Cards: yellow −1, red −3. Own goal −2.
- Bonus points apply as normal.
What you can do after the draft
Waivers
You submit a request: “I want this undrafted player, and I will drop this one.” Requests are processed once a week, 24 hours before the Gameweek deadline.
The key rule: the lowest-ranked manager gets first priority, and anyone who wins a waiver drops to the back of the queue. It is a built-in balancing mechanism — the league leader cannot hoover up every breakout player.
Free agents
Once waivers clear, unclaimed players are available first come, first served. Players newly added to the game mid-season are locked for the first 24 hours, so the prize does not simply go to whoever was awake.
Trades
If the administrator has enabled them, managers can trade directly. The rules are strict: same number of players, like for like by position — a midfielder and a forward only for a midfielder and a forward.
There is also an anti-collusion safeguard: the league has 24 hours to veto a trade, and blocking one requires half the votes.
Two league formats
- Head-to-head — you face one rival each Gameweek. Win 3 points, draw 1, loss 0. The weekly result decides everything, so a weaker squad can win the season with a kind run of opponents.
- Classic — total points across the season, no weekly matchups.
Where the scarcity really is: numbers from our model
This is the section worth the arithmetic. Draft is not about who is best — it is about which position costs you most if you wait one more round. We checked how our 0–100 ratings are distributed among available players:
| Position | Best | 12th | Gap | Rated 85+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Forwards | 89 | 75 | 14 | 5 |
| Defenders | 88 | 82 | 6 | 7 |
| Goalkeepers | 72 | 67 | 5 | 0 |
| Midfielders | 90 | 86 | 4 | 19 |
Four practical conclusions follow:
1. Forwards are the scarcest commodity. The gap between the best forward and the twelfth is 14 rating points — five times the drop among midfielders. Only five forwards are rated 85 or higher. In an eight-manager league, the decent options up front are gone after two rounds.
2. Midfielders can wait. Nineteen midfielders rate 85 or above, and the gap from first to twelfth is just 4 points. Taking your midfielder in round four instead of round one costs you very little.
3. Draft your goalkeeper last. No goalkeeper in the game reaches 80; the best is on 72 and the twelfth on 67. Five points of spread across sixteen rounds is the worst possible use of an early pick.
4. Defenders sit in between — seven rated 85+, then a drop. Worth one or two from the top tier, but not at the cost of your attack.
Who our model points to at each position
Forwards (draft these earliest): Erling Haaland 89, João Pedro 87, Igor Thiago 87, Dominic Calvert-Lewin 86, Ollie Watkins 86. After those five there is a cliff.
Midfielders (the deepest position): Antoine Semenyo 90, Bruno Fernandes 90, Dominik Szoboszlai 89, Harry Wilson 89, Bryan Mbeumo 88, Elliot Anderson 88, Morgan Gibbs-White 88, Enzo Fernández 88.
Defenders: Nico O’Reilly 88, Marc Guéhi 88, Virgil van Dijk 87, Marcos Senesi 87, Gabriel 85, Jan Paul van Hecke 85.
Goalkeepers (late rounds): Caoimhín Kelleher 72, Gianluigi Donnarumma 72, David Raya 70, Jordan Pickford 70.
The full fifty with ratings sit in the FPL AI Player Rankings, and we explain how the ratings are built in our methodology.
One note about prices
Prices do not exist in Draft, so the whole budget juggling act disappears. That has one practical effect: cheap players who are valuable enablers in classic FPL lose their main selling point here. You are not saving money, because there is no money to save. All that counts is how many points they score.
Who Draft is for
For groups of friends who want a competition where nobody can field the same squad as everybody else. Draft rewards pre-season preparation and close attention to the free agent pool, and it punishes passivity — a good player somebody drops disappears within minutes.
If you are new to fantasy football, start with the classic game; we have a complete beginner’s guide for that. Draft makes sense once you already know the scoring and want something sharper.
And if you prefer the classic format, our 2026/27 league is open — 22 teams have joined, the code is 3ix1cw.
The rules in this guide were checked against the official FPL Draft game settings for 2026/27 and Premier League’s own material. Player ratings come from our AI model, which analyses data from the official Fantasy Premier League API — the model does not know team sheets and does not predict the future, it points to where the value sits. Fantasy PL Edge is an independent site, not affiliated with the Premier League or the official Fantasy Premier League game.