10 July 2020 – The Executive Committee of the German Football Association (DFB) has approved a new overall schedule for the 2020-21 season. According to this schedule, Bundesliga will begin the new season on Friday, 18 September 2020. After Matchday 13 (18-21 December 2020) and the second round of the DFB-Pokal (22-23 December 2020), play will break up until the first weekend of January. Matchday 34 for the Bundesliga is scheduled for Saturday, 22 May 2021.
Short winter break
In terms of the season start date, a shorter winter break and three mid-week matchdays, this overall schedule has been defined by the model favoured by most Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2 clubs, under the current circumstances. The DFL had recently sought the clubs’ opinions on this on the basis of several variants of the calendar for the coming season.
1 May, which is a public holiday in Germany, will be a Saturday in 2021, and, in keeping with the wishes of the safety authorities, neither league will have a full day of matches that weekend. According to current planning, the two semi-finals of the DFB-Pokal are scheduled for the first weekend of May, though both fixtures are still subject to final talks. Any delay would have a knock-on effect on Matchday 30 for Bundesliga (20-22 April 2021).
A new overall schedule became necessary because the current 2019-20 season has gone on for longer than originally planned, owing to the temporary suspension due to coronavirus. Therefore, a number of aspects had to be taken into account in the planning for Bundesliga. Other than the fixtures for the DFB-Pokal, above all this meant the further rounds of the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Europa League in the ongoing 2019-20 season, which will be played in August, and matches for both of these tournaments in the coming season. Other relevant factors include FIFA’s windows for international matches and the UEFA EURO, which has been postponed by one year to 11 June 2021.
The DFL will be releasing the match schedule for the 2020-21 season for Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2 on the basis of the new calendar in the coming weeks.