{"id":413315,"date":"2026-01-16T14:45:28","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T14:45:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/413315\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T14:45:28","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T14:45:28","slug":"cfl-playoff-format-discussed-during-2026-league-winter-meetings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/413315\/","title":{"rendered":"CFL playoff format discussed during 2026 league winter meetings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>            <a href=\"https:\/\/cdn.3downnation.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/DSC_0455-251109-.jpg\" data-caption=\"Photo courtesy: Andrew Mahon\/CFL.\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"696\" height=\"464\" class=\"entry-thumb td-modal-image\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/DSC_0455-251109--696x464.jpg\"   alt=\"\" title=\"Grey Cup with Canadian military\"\/><\/a>Photo courtesy: Andrew Mahon\/CFL.<\/p>\n<p>The Canadian Football League\u2019s playoff format was discussed during the 2026 winter meetings in Calgary.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe know that in many other leagues there\u2019s been an introduction of different playoff formats, play-in games, mid-season\u00a0playoffs, new playoff formats. We talked about our playoff format and\u00a0how the Grey Cup is the single biggest annual championship in our country,\u201d commissioner Stewart Johnston said.<\/p>\n<p>Currently, six CFL teams qualify for the postseason with the first-place teams in each division earning byes to the East and West Finals, respectively. Between playing at home and having a week off, this gives these teams a considerable advantage to reaching the Grey Cup. The other four playoff teams meet in the East and West Semi-Finals with the two winners advancing to play the two top seeds.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne area we\u2019re focused on is:\u00a0how do we have our single biggest championship where a team can possibly win only one game and make it to that championship? And can that be solved?\u201d Johnston questioned.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOf course, we have a very unique situation at the CFL, where we have only nine teams. We want to balance a playoff structure and format\u00a0against making sure our regular season is meaningful. More to come,\u00a0that\u2019s all I\u2019ll say on playoff format for now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As it stands, the second-place team in each division hosts a postseason game, even if a potential opponent from the other division produced a better regular season-record.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the crossover rule helps ensure the best six teams garner a spot in the playoffs regardless of division. Should the fourth-place team from one division earn more points than the third-place team from other division, the fourth place team earns the crossover postseason spot and competes versus the second place team.<\/p>\n<p>It certainly doesn\u2019t seem as though the CFL will be changing its playoff format in the near future, but that could potentially change in the long-term based on Johnston\u2019s comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo courtesy: Andrew Mahon\/CFL. The Canadian Football League\u2019s playoff format was discussed during the 2026 winter meetings in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":413316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[166835,166836,49,48,7028,521,522,520,527,36547,64388,82,84996],"class_list":["post-413315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cfl","tag-3down","tag-3downnation","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian","tag-canadian-football-league","tag-canadianfootballleague","tag-cfl","tag-football","tag-playoffs","tag-postseason","tag-sports","tag-stewart-johnston"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/413316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}