Teams, Licensing and the New Season

The club list is rebuilt every December from the real European football season, and that rebuild is the single biggest competitive change in a new version. For DLS 27, community trackers have compiled the expected movements from promotions and relegations — with the caveat that the lists were still being finalised as the European season concluded.

The Special Rule for England

The most interesting licensing quirk in the game is the "Special Rule for England". Because First Touch licenses both the first and second English divisions, clubs relegated out of the top tier — West Ham, Burnley and Wolverhampton among those named for DLS 27 — still appear in the game, in a lower division rather than being removed entirely.

This has a direct effect on squad building. A relegated club does not vanish from your league; it drops into a division you might reach. If you are managing a mid-tier club, some of the strongest available free agents are players who have just dropped a tier — and their value does not always adjust to their level immediately.

How the club list is built

DLS draws from the real European season: clubs that go up are added to the game, clubs that go down are removed or demoted depending on their licensing. The structure behind it is eight divisions / league tiers and ten or more cup competitions, with the World Championship event mode sitting alongside them in DLS 26.

A major overhaul of the lower divisions is the standard expectation for a new version — historic clubs departing, new faces arriving. Lower-division movement is also where the season-long consequences live: a club promoted into your division in December is the club that finishes above you in June.

What actually changes for your club

• Your division's opposition — promoted clubs arrive with their squads, and the clubs that dropped out take their players with them.
• Your transfer market — a relegated club sells. Value movement after a season's worth of fixtures is often the first thing to exploit.
• Your cup draw — cup competitions are re-seeded, and cup runs are where a new version's balance changes are easiest to exploit.
• Your Dream Stars — the card set is built on the previous season's performers, so the top of your division becomes your card pool.

A caution on the lists

Be careful with any specific new-team or removed-team list you read before release. These are compiled by community trackers working from the real season, and they are updated continuously as the European season concludes — a list accurate in early November can be wrong by late November. The structure above is stable. The specific clubs are provisional, and the authoritative version is the one that appears in the game on release day.