The Women's League Cup is getting a new name, a new format, and a notable set of absentees. From the 2026-27 season, the competition will be called The Players Cup, featuring a league-based system with regionalised matches, BBC Sport reports.

The revamp was set in motion last November, when clubs across the Women's Super League (WSL) and WSL 2 voted to restructure the competition. The goal was twofold: ease the scheduling congestion that has long frustrated managers and protect player welfare in a calendar that keeps getting heavier.

Here is the twist that will catch the eye. Any club that has qualified for the Women's Champions League is excluded from The Players Cup entirely. That means Chelsea, the current League Cup holders, Manchester City, the WSL champions, and Arsenal, the league runners-up, will all miss the 2026-27 edition.

For supporters of those three, that stings a little. For everyone else, it opens a door. The remaining 23 teams from the top two divisions now have a trophy route that does not run through the usual heavyweights.

The 23 have been split into Northern and Southern sections but will compete in a single league table. The Northern group features 11 clubs: Aston Villa, Birmingham City, Burnley, Durham, Everton, Liverpool, Manchester United, Newcastle, Nottingham Forest, Sheffield United, and Sunderland. The Southern group has 12: Brighton, Bristol City, Charlton Athletic, Crystal Palace, Ipswich Town, Leicester City, London City Lionesses, Southampton, Tottenham, Watford, West Ham, and Wolves.

Each team plays six matches — three at home, three away — against sides from their own region. A win is worth three points, as in any standard league. But drawn games carry a twist of their own: level after 90 minutes, the match goes to a penalty shootout. The shootout winner collects two points; the loser takes one.

Matches will run from September to December, scheduled on nights when the Women's Champions League is also in action — a deliberate slot that keeps the calendar coherent and avoids piling extra fixtures onto clubs already engaged in Europe.

The top eight from the league phase advance to the quarter-finals in January. Higher-placed finishers get home advantage, and that seeding carries through to the one-legged semi-finals. The final lands on the weekend of 13 and 14 March at a neutral venue.

Zarah Al-Kudcy, the WSL's chief revenue officer, is backing the rebrand to give the competition a sharper identity. Fixtures will be announced on Thursday, 6 August.

What makes this format interesting is the balance it strikes. The Champions League exile of Chelsea, City, and Arsenal means the trophy is genuinely up for grabs — a rare thing in a domestic game where those three have lately dominated. At the same time, the penalty-shootout points system rewards attacking intent: a draw is no longer a dead-end result, but the stakes of those final minutes climb sharply.

For fans of clubs outside the usual top three, there is real something to play for. For neutrals, the format promises more meaningful midweek football through the autumn. The Players Cup may be a new name, but it is the structure underneath it that could give the competition its first real identity.