THE CHANCE for a refresh.

With the free agency period kicking off last Friday and the Continental Tyres Trade Period opening on Monday, all attention turns to how Carlton can improve its list for 2026 and beyond. 

This time last year, the Blues made clear of their focus to attack the draft, aggressively trading up to pick No.3 to welcome Jagga Smith while also welcoming Harry O’Farrell and the Camporeale brothers in the national draft.

In 2025, Carlton Head of List Management Nick Austin said the focus was clear for the Blues to improve their depth in a number of positions. 

“It’s been a challenging year. We feel the competition is really close – we’ve lived the highs and lows of that closeness over the last few years. 

“We’ve got the group of young guys we’re continually looking to build out and we feel like our senior core talent is at an elite level: we’re more looking at that middle-age bracket to build out depth in certain positions and bring it together.

“Those players that we feel can come in straight away and have an impact, adding depth in areas of need. We’ve had players that have already committed to the Club and we’ll be looking to get deals done for those guys early in the week.”

There are also clearly draft considerations for the Blues, with father-son prospect Harry Dean to feature in the early picks which creates the need for the Blues to stockpile draft points throughout this off-season period. 

Austin reiterated the key points from the Club’s leaders in recent weeks that all decisions made will be with the best interests of Carlton at the forefront.

Every decision we make is in the best interests of the Carlton Football Club.

“We’re certainly expecting to make some change to our list. It gives us a bit of a fresh look, we’ll have a number of new coaches coming in which is exciting also.

“It all points to an opportunity to refresh a bit.”