Arsenal and Chelsea likely to miss up to a month of WSL season as inaugural Women’s Club World Cup set for Jan 5-30 in US

Arsenal and Chelsea are expected to be absent from the Women’s Super League for up to a month next season after the inaugural Women’s Club World Cup was provisionally scheduled to take place in the United States from 5-30 January.

The tournament’s proposed January dates would clash directly with the WSL calendar and, while Fifa has yet to confirm the competition’s qualification criteria, The Guardian has learned Arsenal are guaranteed a place as 2025 Champions League winners and Chelsea are likely to join them unless Manchester City win this season’s Champions League.

An extended run in the Club World Cup, based on this season’s fixture pattern, would require both English clubs to miss up to four WSL match rounds and the fourth round of the FA Cup, creating a backlog of domestic fixtures later in the campaign.

Uefa is set to be allocated six places in the Club World Cup: five automatic berths and one place decided via a six‑team play‑in tournament, with the three highest‑ranked play‑in winners joining 13 automatic qualifiers to form a 16‑team field.

According to current proposals, Uefa’s spots would be given to Champions League winners from 2023 to 2027 — presently held by double champions Barcelona and Arsenal, with this season’s winners still to be determined — and the remaining Uefa slots would be filled using the Champions League coefficient table.

Chelsea sit third in Uefa’s coefficient table for the current four‑year cycle, behind Barcelona and Lyon, and have a 17‑point lead over fourth‑placed Bayern Munich that cannot be overturned this cycle; based on current rankings Bayern and Wolfsburg are next in line, although Wolfsburg have not qualified for this season’s Champions League and will not add points, making them likely to be overtaken by Real Madrid or Paris Saint‑Germain. Fifa plans to cap Club World Cup participants from any one country at two, so a Manchester City Champions League triumph would cost Chelsea their place.

The WSL declined to comment because it has not been formally notified of Fifa’s plans, though sources acknowledged the impact is likely to prove challenging and affect a number of match rounds. The WSL’s current winter break is scheduled from 21 December to 10 January and, while it could be adjusted slightly, aligning it with the Club World Cup has been judged impractical given the already congested calendar; moving the winter break would create a backlog of fixtures at the time the Champions League knockout stage begins in early February.

Fixture congestion is a growing concern across the women’s game and will be compounded in 2028 by the Olympic football tournament in Los Angeles in August, immediately before the start of the European domestic season; the IOC has expanded women’s football to 16 nations at the 2028 Games and, unlike the men’s event, senior internationals are permitted to take part. European Leagues has extended its legal complaint to the European Commission about Fifa’s alleged "abuse of power and dominant position" to include the women’s game.

The proposed qualification process and timetable still require ratification by the Fifa Council, and until those decisions are confirmed the competition dates and entry criteria remain subject to change.