2025–26 Russian Premier League

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Russian Premier League 2025–26
Season information
Dates	18 July 2025–May 2026
Season statistics
← 2024–25	2026–27 →

The 2025–26 Russian Premier League (known as the Mir Russian Premier League, also written as Mir Russian Premier Liga for sponsorship reasons) is the 34th season of the premier football competition in Russia since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the 24th under the current Russian Premier League name. It started on 18 July 2025 and the regular season will end on 17 May 2026, followed by the relegation play-offs.

Teams

The relegation and promotion team movement was particularly complicated in this offseason. At the conclusion of the previous season, Orenburg and Fakel Voronezh were relegated directly from the Premier League, both after three seasons in the top tier. Top two teams of the Russian First League, Baltika Kaliningrad and Torpedo Moscow were promoted and returned to the Premier League after one and two seasons in the second tier, respectively. In the RPL/RFL play-offs, Premier League club Akhmat Grozny defeated Ural Yekaterinburg and remained in the league, while Pari Nizhny Novgorod lost to Sochi, Sochi returned to the Premier League after one season in the lower level.

Khimki, which finished the RPL season outside of relegation zone, were relegated administratively by the Russian Football Union due to lack of financial guarantees. After several weeks of uncertainty, on 16 June 2025 Khimki were officially replaced by Pari Nizhny Novgorod, which was kept in the league despite losing in the play-offs.

In late June, an investigation was opened into Sochi's player Vladimir Pisarsky, who was betting on his team's games. On 3 July 2025, he was banned from football for at least a year, however, the club was not punished as there was no evidence that he influenced the games outcomes to improve his betting results.

On 19 June 2025, Torpedo Moscow's co-owner Leonid Sobolev and general director Valeri Skorodumov were arrested on suspicion of attempting to bribe referee Maksim Perezva. They are suspected of offering Perezva 6,000,000 rubles (approximately 66,000 euros) for giving Torpedo advantage in three First League games from March 2025 to May 2025 in which he was expected to be the referee, Perezva reported their offer to the police. The investigators searched their offices and homes, confiscating communication devices and documents. Russian Football Union opened their own investigation. On 8 July 2025, referee Bogdan Golovko, who did not award a penalty kick against Torpedo on the last day of the 2024–25 season (a decision later deemed incorrect by the official RFU refereeing review commission) was also arrested on the charge of "illegally influencing an official sporting event". On 10 July 2025, eight days before the season was scheduled to begin, RFU excluded Torpedo from the Premier League, banned Skorodumov and Sobolev from football activity (for 10 and 5 years respectively) and fined Torpedo 5 million rubles (approximately 55,000 euros). The league president Aleksandr Alayev commented that the decision about Torpedo's replacement (if any) will be made by the Russian Football Union. On the next day, RFU decided to allow Orenburg to remain in the Premier League and keep Torpedo in the First League for the 2025–26 season.

External links

• Official website

Template:2025–26 in Russian football