FPL chip strategy 2026/27: when to play every chip

Eight chips, two deadlines, and one date in January that catches people out every single season.

Updated 7 August 2026

How many chips do you get in 2026/27, and when do they expire?

You get eight chips — two full sets of four — and the first set expires at the Gameweek 19 deadline, 13:30 GMT on Saturday 2 January 2027.

That expiry is the single most expensive thing most managers don't know. The first four chips do not roll over into the second half. An unplayed Wildcard on 2 January is not a saved Wildcard, it is a wasted one — and the usual way people find out is in February, when they go to use a chip that stopped working weeks earlier.

When should you play Bench Boost?

In a gameweek where all fifteen of your players have a fixture, and ideally where several of them play twice.

Bench Boost scores your entire squad rather than your starting eleven, so its value is exactly the points your four bench players score — and nothing else. That means two things follow. A bench of cheap non-starters makes the chip nearly worthless no matter which week you play it. And a double gameweek, where clubs play twice because an earlier fixture was postponed, roughly doubles what the chip is worth.

The mistake is playing it in a week that merely looks good for your best players. Your best players are in your eleven. Bench Boost only pays for the four you normally leave out.

When should you play Triple Captain?

On a premium forward or midfielder in a double gameweek, or failing that in his single easiest home fixture.

The armband already doubles a player's return, so Triple Captain adds one more copy of whatever he scores. A double gameweek is the natural fit because it gives you two matches of minutes on triple points rather than one. If no double is available in your window, the next best thing is a genuinely soft home fixture for the highest-ceiling player you own — ceiling matters more than reliability here, because you are paying for the tail.

Doubles and blanks do not exist at the start of a season. They appear from the middle of the campaign onwards, when cup runs force postponements, which is precisely why a chip plan made in August has to be revisited rather than set once.

When should you play Free Hit?

In your thinnest week — usually a blank gameweek where several of your players have no fixture at all.

Free Hit gives you a one-week borrowed squad that reverts afterwards, so its value is the difference between what your real team would have scored and what a purpose-built team scores instead. That difference is largest when your own team is at its weakest. Playing it in a normal week, where your real squad would have done fine anyway, throws away most of what the chip is for.

When should you play your Wildcard?

Immediately before a run of good fixtures, or when injuries and price traps would otherwise force you into three or more hits.

A Wildcard is worth the transfers it saves you plus the fixtures it buys you. Both point at the same timing: play it just before your squad's fixture difficulty swings in your favour, so you get the maximum number of good weeks out of the team you build. Playing it after the swing has started means paying for it and only collecting half the benefit.

The other legitimate trigger is damage control. If three or more of your players are injured, suspended or bleeding value at once, the Wildcard is cheaper than the hits.

Why does fixture-based timing beat gut feel?

Because every chip's value is a specific, calculable number, and your intuition is not tracking thirty-eight gameweeks against fifteen players.

Each of the four chips is really asking the same question in a different form: which single gameweek maximises this particular quantity, given my squad?

None of those are things you can hold in your head. They also change every time you make a transfer, which is why a chip plan written once in August and never revisited is worth very little by October.

How FPL Receipts plans your chips for you

It scans all thirty-eight gameweeks against your actual fifteen players and names a gameweek for each of the eight chips, with the reasoning attached.

Rather than generic advice, it computes the four quantities in the table above using your own squad and the live fixture list, then tells you which week wins for each chip and why — how many of your players double that week, how many blank, how the four gameweeks after a wildcard compare with the four before. Every recommendation appears on the chip planner itself with a one-tap button to save it, so the suggestion lands where the decision gets made.

It recomputes from live fixture data every time you open it, so when doubles and blanks appear mid-season the plan moves with them.

Common questions