International breaks usually tend to either be a welcome distraction from the hectic club football schedule or the bane of a football fan’s life.
While some clubs will welcome a gap in domestic fixtures are a chance to try and get an injury list under control or regroup, while for others it can kill momentum and result in their best players returning from their national team nursing injuries.
The 2024/25 season is still in its infancy, but we’ve already had one international break and another is a couple of weeks away, with fans used to seeing the first few months of the season disrupted by breaks in September, October and then November.
The Nations League is the current focus for Europe’s international teams, while World Cup qualifying is continuing in South America ahead of the 2026 World Cup in the USA, Mexico and Canada.
Lee Carsley is the current England interim manager (Image credit: Getty Images)
And it is after that tournament when we will see the changes take place, with the FIFA calendar revealing that the traditional September and October breaks are being reimagined.
Rather than having two separate breaks, the 2026 and 2027 calendars now show one longer break that will take in four international matchdays.
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The 2026 break will take place between September 21 and October 6, while in 2027 it will run from September 20 to October 5.
There will then be the usual two-matchday break in mid-November, with subsequent breaks coming in March and in June at the end of the season.
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While this change could reduce travel time for players, who only have to link up once with their national teams in the Autumn, it remains to be seen how clubs and players will react to seeing the domestic season places on ice for more than two weeks so early in the campaign.
The change comes as FIFA continue to field criticism over their plans for the expanded Club World Cup which is scheduled to be played in the USA next summer, as financial rows and fears over player burnout continue to plague FIFA’s plans for the revised 32-team tournament.
