Gold Coast beat St Kilda 103 to 80 at Marvel Stadium on Thursday night and, in doing so, closed the door on the 2026 finals race. The ten clubs that will play off in September are settled with three days of the home and away season still to run. What is left in round 24 is the order.
Fremantle finished the job weeks ago and sits on 76 points as minor premier. Sydney is second on 68. Then come four clubs on 60: Brisbane, Hawthorn and Melbourne, with Geelong and Adelaide a game back on 56 and Collingwood on 52. The Western Bulldogs hold ninth on 50 and Carlton tenth on 46. Greater Western Sydney, the only side still mathematically in range of Carlton, can reach 44 and no further.
That order matters more this year than it used to. The Wildcard Round, played on 28 to 30 August, is the first change to the AFL finals framework since 2000 and replaces the pre-finals bye. The teams that finish seventh to tenth play two knockout games, seventh against tenth and eighth against ninth, with the higher placed side hosting. The two winners take the seventh and eighth seeds and the two losers are done. The top six get the weekend off.
So the line that decides a season is now sixth, not eighth. Adelaide and Geelong are level on 56 points and separated by percentage, Geelong at 120.2 and Adelaide at 115.1, and both are playing to avoid a knockout game they would rather not have. Geelong hosts Richmond at GMHBA Stadium on Saturday night. Adelaide hosts Greater Western Sydney at Adelaide Oval at the same time.
The top four is live until Sunday afternoon. Brisbane secures the double chance with a win over Collingwood at the MCG on Friday night and drops as far as seventh with a loss. Hawthorn, whose record of 14 wins, six losses and two draws puts it fourth on percentage, has to travel to Optus Stadium to play West Coast in the last game of the season and needs the four points to be certain. Melbourne, level on 60 with both of them, plays the Western Bulldogs at the MCG on Saturday afternoon.
Collingwood is the club with the most to gain from Friday night. A win over Brisbane would push it towards a home wildcard game rather than an away one, and the difference between hosting eighth against ninth and travelling for it is the difference between a home crowd and a hostile one in a knockout match.
Carlton, locked into tenth, hosts Fremantle at Marvel Stadium on Saturday afternoon in a game that changes nothing on its own ladder position but sets up a wildcard trip to whoever finishes seventh. The round closes with Essendon and Port Adelaide at Marvel on Sunday and Sydney hosting North Melbourne at the SCG before Hawthorn and West Coast in Perth.
The format adds two matches to the finals series, taking it from nine games to eleven. AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon said when it was announced that fans love finals games and the change gives them more opportunity. It also means four clubs that would have been on the beach a week from now are still playing. The wildcard fixtures will be set once the last siren sounds at Optus Stadium on Sunday evening.
