It’s happening, but perhaps sooner than anyone expected.
The AFL will introduce a wildcard round for the 2026 season – which really just means a top-10 finals system, except with a few fewer games than could be played (we’ll get to that later).
In the 18-team competition, 10 teams will get a shot at the post-season, with 7th vs 10th and 8th vs 9th elimination finals to be played in the current pre-finals bye week.
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The winners of those ‘wildcard’ games will then advance into the current top eight system, with the highest-ranked winner slotting into 7th, and the lowest-ranked winner becoming 8th. (This ensures 5th doesn’t end up with an easier opponent than 6th in the elimination final week.)
But again, the name is just a name. AFL CEO Andrew Dillon confirmed on Monday morning these games are proper finals – they count as a finals win, Essendon fans.
In other leagues where a ‘wildcard’ finals place is given, it traditionally means someone who wouldn’t automatically qualify for the post-season is qualifying – such as in the NFL, where each conference’s four division winners take the top four seeds, followed by the next-best teams as ‘wildcards’.
There’s nothing like that here. If you make the top six, you get a bye. If you’re 7th to 10th, you have to win a game to qualify for the last eight. Simple enough, really.
WHAT DOES THIS ALL MEAN?
Only one team, the 2016 Western Bulldogs, has ever won the flag from a ‘wildcard’ position having finished 7th in that very top-heavy season.
(Although technically, we’ve had a team finish last but win the flag. Fitzroy was fourth in the four-team 1916 season, going just 2-9 with a draw, however everyone made the finals. They won three in a row – yes, they won more finals than home & away games – to pinch the premiership.)
So it’s not as if there are teams sitting 9th and 10th on the ladder every year who we think can realistically win the title. And it’s going to be incredibly hard for them to do so, needing to win four consecutive away games plus the Grand Final.
The AFL is expanding the finals to 10 teams – sort of.Source: FOX SPORTS
At the low end of teams who could now qualify, you’ve got teams like the 2021 Saints.
They were… fine, at best. After a run to the semi-finals in the shortened 2020 campaign, the next year they went 10-12 with a below-average percentage of 91.5%, ending up in 10th. It’s fair to say they had a disappointing season.
From now on, that disappointing team would play finals… but to be fair they could’ve certainly won their wildcard game.
They would’ve played 7th-placed GWS, who snuck in despite winning just 11 games themselves. And when the two teams played earlier in the year, the Giants won by just eight points at home. It could’ve been a great final.
St Kilda and Port Adelaide would’ve been the biggest beneficiaries of the wildcard round, each playing finals an additional four times.
Ken Hinkley certainly would’ve appreciated it – because had it always existed, he would’ve made finals in 11 of his 13 seasons as coach, and missed out by one place in a 12th.
These are the teams on the low end of the spectrum. But we are unlikely to see any 10-win teams make the top 10 in the future, because we now play a 23rd game.
And when Tasmania comes in as the 19th club, we’re going to need to expand to 24 games anyway (because you can’t have 19 teams each playing 23 games in a season, it’s mathematically impossible).
The benefits of the wildcard round are two-fold: more excitement at the end of the season, with more teams and more fans invested… and obviously, the financial aspect – for the league, the broadcasters, and even the clubs (since two more now qualify for the finals, and two more get to host a final).
But intrinsically with a limited number of teams qualifying for a sports league’s playoffs, there will be seasons where there are too many good teams, and seasons with not enough good teams.
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In 2025, there were nine good teams. That meant the finals race was both awesome, because we knew someone good had to miss out (it was the Bulldogs in the end), but also a bit boring with nine other teams being irrelevant for almost two months.
A wildcard round would not have helped. While the fight for seeding inside the top eight would have been somewhat interesting, the top nine teams would’ve known they were playing finals well before August rolled around.
While the battle for 10th theoretically would’ve kept fans of Sydney, Carlton, St Kilda, Port Adelaide and the like invested, it was incredibly obvious for the last six weeks that the Swans were way better than the eight teams below them but not as good as the top nine. They ended up three wins ahead of 11th-placed Carlton and would’ve locked up the final wildcard spot in Round 22.
And the 2025 Swans were one of the better 10th-placed teams we’ve seen. The average 10th-placed team in the 18-team era won 11.4 games, lost 11.5 games and had a percentage of 105% – they were basically bang-on average. (All stats pro-rated to a 23-game season).
For every year where 10th isn’t really good enough to play finals, you have years like 2024, where the race for 10th would’ve been brilliant.
You might’ve forgotten it given how bifurcated the 2025 league felt, but the prior year’s competition was a thrill ride, with 14 teams winning at least 11 games – Melbourne (14th) finished just two games outside the eight. That finals race would have been incredible with the wildcard carrot dangling in front of the chasers.
On average, though, we’re giving a bunch of average teams a very small chance of winning the flag, while making it harder to see a repeat of the 2016 Bulldogs (who won it from 7th) or even the 2025 Hawks (who made a prelim from 8th).
It’s a bit strange that being 7th on the ladder is now so much worse than being 4th – the former has to win five games for a premiership, while the latter can get there in three. And having to play an extra game is by far the biggest structural disadvantage a finalist can be given.
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But you could argue, and the league would certainly argue, the positives outweigh the negatives.
After all, finals games are fun, and now we get two extras! Sure, 7th vs 10th doesn’t have quite the same stakes as 2nd vs 3rd, but it’s still going to be exciting on the night.
Even a top eight is arbitrary. We’re used to it now, but history suggests there are usually a handful of teams in any given season actually good enough to win the premiership – not eight of them.
In 26 years of the top eight, the teams who finished 4th to 8th have a combined seven Grand Final appearances, winning just two premierships. It’s not that a top 10 allows teams that aren’t good enough to play finals; it just allows more of them.
This was a change that had to be made at some point, with Tasmania set to become the 19th club in 2028, and a 20th team almost surely following in the near future (to allow a lucrative 10th game each weekend, and to make the fixture less awkward in regards to byes). Having eight of 20 teams making the finals would be too few.
And it’s not like the AFL is the only league that allows such a large proportion of its teams into the post-season. The 30-team NBA has long allowed 16 teams into its playoffs, and with the introduction of a play-in tournament – which is kinda what the wildcard round is anyway – it’s now 20 of 30 teams who get a shot at the title.
It’s actually even more ridiculous than it sounds on paper, because other than a few rare exceptions (like the 2023 Miami Heat), the No.7 and No.8 seeds rarely even win their first series once they get into the playoffs, never mind make the finals.
But we digress. You’re well within your rights to think a wildcard round is unnecessary – and it’s extremely unlikely a team will win the flag from 10th in the next 50 years.
It is a decision, like many others made by many other sports leagues, that’s about more than just finding the best way to determine a premier. Teams are allowed to sell games interstate; some teams have to travel way more than others; there’s plenty in footy that isn’t perfectly fair.
Which is why it’s a little bit strange that the AFL is leaving money on the table.
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THE MONEY ON THE TABLE
We won’t bore you with the history of the NRL, but in 1998 after the fallout from the Super League War, the new top-level rugby league competition included a whopping 20 teams.
That saw a 10-team finals system used, for the first and only time. But it’s not the same system the AFL is using where only 7th through 10th play in week one.
Instead, the NRL effectively used the old-fashioned McIntyre Final Five system – which the AFL used through the 70s and 80s – and doubled it.
The top two teams had a bye, but everyone else played in week one for either seeding or elimination purposes – 3rd vs 6th, 4th vs 5th, 7th vs 10th and 8th vs 9th.
Then in week two, the eight remaining teams either fought for a bye, for seeding, or to avoid elimination.
We’ll put the details below, but perhaps most importantly, it meant compared to the top-eight finals system there were an additional four finals – not two, as the AFL is introducing with the wildcard round.
Remember, the AFL is effectively scrapping the pre-finals bye anyway. Four teams are going to play during it. Why not go up to eight, and have a couple of extra high-stakes games in there?
There’s a competitive balance reason to do it, too. It would mean only the top two teams get a bye week before their first final – a genuine advantage which many feel has been lost since the pre-finals bye was introduced.
If expanding the finals makes the regular season less relevant, than you can compensate by creating a finals structure where finishing higher on the ladder is even more valuable.
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And in the NRL’s case, the expanded top-10 finals system showed that anyone can contend for the premiership… because that year’s Grand Final saw 1st playing 9th!
Yes, while the 1998 Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs didn’t claim the crown, they did make a remarkable run through the post-season – beating the sides who finished 8th, 5th, 2nd and 4th consecutively, then leading the Brisbane Broncos at halftime of the Grand Final before fading away.
Perhaps the AFL just doesn’t know about this. More likely, they don’t want to make big and dramatic changes all at once – the wildcard round is more like a tweak, not a wholesale change to the post-season setup.
But surely this is an option for them down the road. After all, you’re selling more tickets and making more money from playing 13 finals games than you are from 11.
HOW AN EXPANDED FINAL 10 SYSTEM COULD WORK
WEEK 1 (Wildcard round)
Game A: 4th vs 5th
Game B: 3rd vs 6th
Game C: 7th vs 10th
Game D: 8th vs 9th
WEEK 2 (Qualifying final round)
Game E: 1st vs Winner of Game A
Game F: 2nd vs Winner of Game B
Game G: Loser of Game A vs Winner of Game D
Game H: Loser of Game B vs Winner of Game C
WEEK 3 (Semi final round)
Game I: Loser of Game E vs Winner of Game H
Game J: Loser of Game F vs Winner of Game G
WEEK 4 (Preliminary final round)
Game K: Winner of Game E vs Winner of Game J
Game L: Winner of Game F vs Winner of Game I
WEEK 5 (Grand Final)
Game M: Winner of Game K vs Winner of Game L
1st and 2nd get a bye, two home finals and the double chance in week 2
3rd and 4th get two home finals and the double chance in week 1 (also in week 2 if they win)
5th and 6th get a home final and the double chance in week 1 (also in week 2 if they win)
7th and 8th get a home final
9th and 10th also exist