The Premier League has announced it will have two transfer windows this summer to allow Manchester City and Chelsea to sign players before the Club World Cup, BBC Sport reports.
The window will open between Sunday, 1 June and Tuesday, 10 June, then close for five days before running again from Monday, 16 June until Monday, 1 September.
This summer features the first expanded Fifa Club World Cup, which involves 32 teams and adopts the format of the regular World Cup of the past few years.
Chelsea and Manchester City are the Premier League teams in the tournament which takes place in the United States from Sunday, 15 June.
But the Premier League can only have 12 weeks of a summer window – hence the five-day break in order to run it until 1 September.
Fifa has allowed new players to be registered for the Club World Cup from 1-10 June, and again from 27 June-3 July for the knockout stage.
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Firstly, to bring order to the global registration system, world governing body Fifa only permits the transfer window in any individual country to be open for 16 weeks in any calendar year.
In Europe, precedent dictates four of those weeks are for the winter window, leaving 12 in the summer. In 2024, the Premier League transfer window opened on 14 June and closed on 30 August.
However, in October, Fifa approved an additional window from 1-10 June that would allow the 32 clubs competing in the Club World Cup to register new players before the tournament.
It also agreed to open a registration window mid-tournament, from 27 June and 3 July, to allow clubs to register additional players for the knockout stage.
As well as Manchester City and Chelsea, European heavyweights Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid, Inter Milan, Juventus, Paris St-Germain, Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund and Saudi Arabia’s Al-Hilal are among others playing in the tournament.
In order to ensure Manchester City and Chelsea did not have an advantage over the other 18 top-flight clubs, the Premier League has adopted the same window.
However, 12 weeks from 1 June is 24 August. The Premier League wanted to be aligned with the rest of Europe’s big leagues around when the summer window closes. Those leagues preferred to close the window at the end of August, so that meant the window had to close and reopen.
