Old Firm Cup Clash Headlines Premier Sports Cup Quarter-Finals
Rangers will host Celtic at noon on Sunday 13 September in the last of four Premier Sports Cup quarter-finals, a fixture that needs no introduction to Scottish football followers and plenty of context for everyone else.
The Old Firm derby — the name given to the rivalry between Glasgow's two biggest clubs, Rangers and Celtic — is the fixture that stops a city and divides it down the middle. Putting that fixture in a cup quarter-final, where the loser goes out on the spot, only sharpens the edge. BBC Sport confirmed the tie as part of a quarter-final schedule the SPFL published on 18 August 2026.
The route to the last eight began with Round 2 ties on Friday 14 August 2026. Stenhousemuir, a part-time club from League One — Scotland's third tier — knocked Motherwell out of the competition the following Sunday. Kilmarnock won a dramatic Ayrshire derby on the same Friday night. Both results shaped a quarter-final draw that mixes heavyweights with genuine underdogs.
The full quarter-final line-up runs across three days. Hearts, one of Edinburgh's principal clubs, travel to Stenhousemuir on the Friday evening to open the weekend — a tie that pits the top-flight visitors against the lower-league giant-killers who earned their place by eliminating Motherwell. Saturday brings a double-header: Ross County host Hibernian in Dingwall, the most northerly outpost of the Scottish professional game, before Kilmarnock meet Aberdeen at Rugby Park in a tie between two sides with recent knockout pedigree. Then Rangers and Celtic close the round on Sunday lunchtime. BBC Sport
Celtic are the holders. They beat Rangers in last season's Premier Sports Cup final, a match that finished 3-3 after extra time before Celtic won 5-4 on penalties, with Daizen Maeda — the Japanese forward whose pace and pressing have made him a cult figure at Parkhead — dispatching the decisive spot-kick.
For the neutral, the Stenhousemuir story is the thread worth following. A club from the third tier reaching a national quarter-final is rare enough; hosting a Premiership side under their own floodlights on a Friday night is the kind of occasion that cup football is built around. Win or lose, Ochilview — their 3,776-capacity ground — will be full and loud.
What the Sunday finale guarantees is a meeting of the two clubs who have shared Scottish football's silverware between them for the better part of a century. One will be a round closer to the first trophy of the season. The other will be looking at the calendar for the next chance to settle the score.
