The 2026 SSE Airtricity Men’s Premier Division will begin a week earlier than previously in a bid to ease fixture congestion later in the campaign, while Derry City have been confirmed as Shamrock Rovers\u2019 opponents in the President\u2019s Cup.<\/p>\n
The Men\u2019s Premier Division will begin on Friday, 6 February, while the Women\u2019s Premier Division will starting on Saturday, 14 March. The men’s season began in mid-February in previous seasons.<\/p>\n
The First Division commences on Friday, 13 February.<\/p>\n
Fixtures for the new season will be released on Tuesday, 16 December.<\/p>\n
The 2026 Sports Direct Men\u2019s FAI Cup Final will take place at the Aviva Stadium on Sunday, 8 November, with the Sports Direct Women\u2019s FAI Cup Final being held at Tallaght Stadium on Sunday, 27 September.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Candystripes will face in the Hoops in the curtain-raiser for the new season.<\/p>\n
The President\u2019s Cup clash will be on Saturday, 31 January, with a 5pm kick-off at Tallaght Stadium.<\/p>\n
The match is traditionally between the league and FAI Cup winners. Last year\u2019s runners-up in the Premier Division Derry have been handed the spot due to the Hoops winning both trophies in 2025..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2026 SSE Airtricity Men’s Premier Division will begin a week earlier than previously in a bid to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[18,19,17,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-209746","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115644837672362958","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}