Derby fixtures return as Millwall v West Ham and West Brom v Wolves headline weekend
Millwall v West Ham will take place at The Den on Saturday lunchtime (12:30 BST) and West Bromwich Albion v Wolverhampton Wanderers will be played at Molineux on Sunday (12:00 BST), as several long-standing rivalries reappear in the 2026-27 EFL schedule following the fixtures release 84 days ago.
The EFL calendar stretches across 35 weekends and, according to the original coverage, most fixtures serve routine interests while a small proportion of matches provoke intense emotion — the piece quantified that split as 95.65% “fillers” and 4.35% fixtures that are block-out dates for supporters. Last May’s promotion and relegation changes mean a number of Championship clubs will renew rivalries this season that were dormant for years, producing headline derbies early on many supporters’ lists.
Millwall’s meeting with West Ham at The Den is the first such fixture at that ground in almost 15 years; the last match there finished goalless 15 years ago this week and the Saturday lunchtime slot is billed as a return of the long-running Dockers Derby. The clubs first met in 1899 when Millwall Athletic won 2-1 at West Ham in the FA Cup and, overall, the sides have faced each other 60 times with only seven meetings in the past 33 years. BBC Radio London’s Nick Godwin said the 2009 cup encounter “left a scar on football in the city” and added: "London derbies generally run by their own rules. The expectations, the crowd, the sense of proximity - they all add to an air of unpredictability. "However, Millwall against West Ham operates on a different level. This match walks a tightrope whenever and wherever it is played. Unlike so many clashes involving sides in the capital, this one happens infrequently."
That pair’s only shared league season in the past 22 years was 2011-12, when they drew at The Den in September and West Ham won 2-1 at Upton Park the following February on a campaign that ended in promotion; the current encounter represents the second longest gap between meetings in the 127-year rivalry, behind a 31-year interval before the 1978 second-tier fixture. West Ham have not won in Bermondsey since December 1988 at the (old) Den, with Millwall winning three and drawing two of the five home meetings since then, and Godwin predicts: "Whichever team copes best in that environment will succeed," adding: "If Millwall can rise to the occasion then don't count them out. If West Ham can blot out the noise, their promotion credentials will be burnished. "There will be plenty watching this game to see if all those questions get overwhelmed by a different sort of story. "That 90-minute tightrope walk will test everyone involved." The return fixture is scheduled for February at the London Stadium, which had yet to host an event when the clubs last met nearly six months before the London Olympics; that earlier defeat ended Millwall's seven-match unbeaten league run against West Ham, a run that lasted almost 21 years to the day.
The Black Country derby between West Bromwich Albion and Wolves is listed as the 164th senior meeting and will be played on Sunday at 12:00 BST, the first competitive fixture between the two in front of fans since a heated FA Cup fourth-round tie in January 2024 that Wolves won 2-0 at The Hawthorns. That game was halted for 38 minutes because of crowd trouble and the Baggies were later fined by the Football Association; the clubs are original Football League members and lie fewer than nine miles apart as the crow flies. The sides shared only one season in the same division across the last 15 years, the Covid-affected Premier League campaign in which both meetings in 2021 were behind closed doors, and BBC Radio WM’s Mike Taylor said: "Two silver linings for their fans were identified when Wolves were relegated from the Premier League. "No longer being exposed to VAR, obviously, was viewed as a release. The other was the return of the Black Country derby. "It will be a great addition to Wolves' calendar, indeed may play an outsized part in their season by giving them a huge injection of positive energy, if they win. The unspoken part is that the inverse is also true. "For some years, Wolves have been able to look down from the Premier League at Albion. Losing to them now they are back on the same level would make the loss of that status even harder to accept." Wolves striker Jimenez to miss derby with West Brom.
Historically, the last league meeting between the pair in front of spectators was a 5-1 victory for Albion at Molineux in February 2012; West Brom have won six of their past eight visits to Wolverhampton across the past 25 years, including a 3-2 Championship play-off semi-final success in 2007. Prior to the January FA Cup defeat, Albion had lost only three of 23 meetings with Wolves over the past three decades and have recorded 11 more wins than their rivals across the rivalry’s history, a competitive balance that prompted Wanderers to alter their walkout music at Molineux. BBC Radio WM’s Albion commentator Steve Hermon commented: "Because both teams have yo-yoed between the second tier and the Premier League, there have been just six league meetings in the past 17 years. "Despite that, the hatred between blue and white and old gold has not waned. I think it is an underrated rivalry nationally. The atmosphere for these games is rabid and it can boil over. Hopefully we are just talking about what happens on the pitch."
Lancashire will also provide several local derbies this season after Burnley’s relegation from the Premier League and Bolton’s promotion to the Championship, with Blackburn and Preston also in the second tier and the four clubs accounting for a third of the original 12 Football League members. The East Lancashire rivalry between Blackburn and Burnley resumes in late November with the return fixture in early February; Burnley and Bolton meet on Boxing Day for the first time in almost 11 years, a sequence in which Bolton had won only one of the previous seven meetings while losing five, having been unbeaten across nine games over 22 years prior to that run. Wanderers host Blackburn on 5 December, the same weekend Burnley welcome Preston, and Bolton sit top of the county table after a 2-1 opening-day win at home to Preston.
Bolton’s fixture list includes a trip to Deepdale in March, described as the first of three away Lancashire derbies in 14 days that will also feature Preston hosting Burnley during the same fortnight. In Wales, the south Wales derby returns after Cardiff were promoted back to the Championship at the first attempt last season, with Cardiff visiting Swansea at the end of November and the return tie scheduled for the capital in mid-March. The rivalry dates to Swansea’s first competitive fixture in 1912; Cardiff won the last encounter 3-0 in January 2025 and Swansea’s most recent victory came in March 2024, while Swansea completed the rivalry’s first "double-double" in 2021-22 and 2022-23.
This weekend’s immediate fixtures are confirmed: Millwall v West Ham at The Den on Saturday lunchtime (12:30 BST) and West Brom v Wolves at Molineux on Sunday (12:00 BST), with other regional derbies scheduled through late November, Boxing Day, early February and into March as outlined above.
