Racing, Depor and Málaga are back in Spain's top flight

Fourteen years for Racing, eight for Depor and Málaga. La Liga 2026-27 welcomes back three grounds that once meant elite football — and rewrites the form book.

Some seasons are remembered for who wins them. Others are remembered for who comes back. La Liga 2026-27, which kicks off on Saturday 15 August, belongs firmly in the second category: the list of La Liga 2026-27 teams contains three names that had spent years off the top-flight map. Racing de Santander return after fourteen years, Deportivo de La Coruña and Málaga CF after eight, and just like that Spanish football gets back three grounds that once meant elite football. For supporters it is nostalgia. For anyone filling in a prediction slip, it is a genuine puzzle from the very first weekend.

Fourteen years in the wilderness: Racing de Santander are back

Racing de Santander had not played in the Spanish top flight since 2011-12, when they finished twentieth and last and went down. What followed was far worse than an ordinary relegation. In 2012-13 they finished bottom again, suffering a second consecutive drop — this time into Segunda División B, the third tier of Spanish football. The club from Cantabria spent much of the following decade bouncing around the third tier and Primera RFEF, and only clawed their way back to the second division in 2022-23.

The return, by contrast, was emphatic. Racing won the 2025-26 Segunda División with 82 points from 42 matches, a haul that leaves nothing to argue about: they were the best side in the division from start to finish. Fourteen years after that relegation, the Campos de Sport de El Sardinero has top-flight fixtures on the calendar again, and Santander has back a weekly occasion that looked gone for good.

• Last top-flight season before promotion: 2011-12, finishing twentieth.
• Two relegations in a row: down to the second tier in 2012, down to Segunda B a year later.
• 2025-26 Segunda División champions with 82 points from 42 games.
• Home ground: Campos de Sport de El Sardinero, Santander.

Deportivo bring top-flight football back to Riazor

Deportivo de La Coruña took the second automatic promotion place with 77 points, just five behind the champions. Depor had dropped out of the top flight at the end of 2017-18, in the same set of relegations that also claimed Las Palmas and Málaga. Eight years on, the Galicians are back somewhere they treated as home through the nineties and two thousands, when they were winning league titles and playing European semi-finals.

The thing worth paying attention to is the atmosphere. Riazor is one of those grounds where results and the mood of an entire city move together, and a newly promoted side with its supporters still celebrating is exactly the kind of opponent that unsettles visitors who travel north expecting a routine afternoon. Recent top-flight history is full of promoted teams who arrived hungry and took points nobody had budgeted for.

Málaga complete the set: eight years and a play-off

The third ticket was the hardest earned. Málaga CF finished fourth in the 2025-26 Segunda División and came up through the play-offs — the long route, decided over two-legged ties with no margin for error at all. Like Depor, the Andalusians went down in 2017-18, and like Depor they return eight seasons later. La Rosaleda, which hosted a Champions League quarter-final in the last decade, has top-flight football again.

All three promoted clubs share something that goes beyond sentiment: they have infrastructure, big stadiums and a support base well above what a newly promoted side normally brings. None of that guarantees survival — Spain's top flight is unforgiving towards modest budgets — but it does change the texture of the season. La Liga 2026-27 features three away trips the big clubs will take seriously.

Who went down, and how La Liga 2026-27 shapes up

For three to come in, three had to go out. RCD Mallorca in eighteenth, Girona FC in nineteenth and Real Oviedo in twentieth were relegated in 2025-26, handing their places to Racing, Deportivo and Málaga. Oviedo's case carries its own cruelty: they regained top-flight status after an agonisingly long wait and lost it again almost immediately — a reminder of how narrow the margins are for promoted clubs.

At the other end of the table, FC Barcelona defend the title after winning their 29th league championship last season. The calendar makes them wait, though: Barça do not begin until Thursday 27 August, against Athletic Club, in the very last match of that stretched-out opening matchday.

A start bent out of shape by the 2026 World Cup

There is an obvious reason the calendar looks so strange. The 2026 World Cup finished on 19 July, when Spain were crowned champions after beating Argentina 1-0 at MetLife Stadium through a Ferran Torres goal in extra time — in a tournament where they conceded a single goal, Rodri was named best player and Unai Simón best goalkeeper. Clubs with players involved deep into the knockout rounds needed breathing room, and La Liga gave it to them by spreading matchday 1 across thirteen days.

The knock-on effects are things you almost never see. Real Madrid play their matchday 1 fixture against Real Sociedad on Wednesday 26 August, but they play their matchday 2 game before it — away at Espanyol in Cornellà on Saturday 22 August. In other words, they open their league season on matchday 2 and catch up on matchday 1 four days later. It is worth double-checking before you assume which fixtures belong to which round.

Why promoted clubs quietly wreck your predictions

A newly promoted team is, statistically, the hardest opponent to price. There are no recent top-flight matches to compare against, the squad has usually been rebuilt over the summer, and second-division form does not translate cleanly to the level above. With three clubs of that profile arriving at once, the 2026-27 prediction season starts with considerably more noise than usual.

• Three grounds absent from recent top-flight seasons: El Sardinero, Riazor and La Rosaleda.
• With no recent data at this level, statistical baselines for the promoted sides are thin and should be weighted carefully.
• Home advantage for a club returning to the elite with its crowd in party mood tends to be underrated in the opening rounds.
• Matchday 1 stretches across thirteen days — check the actual dates before you commit, because not every game falls on the same weekend.

The practical takeaway is simple: the opening rounds of a season with three historic clubs coming up are the least predictable of the whole year, and that is not a problem — it is the fun part. Nobody has inside information in August. Whoever calls a Racing result against one of the big sides on matchday 1 will almost certainly have done it on instinct and context, not because their model was sharper than anyone else's.

If you fancy testing your instincts against your friends' at precisely the point in the year when predictions are at their most unreliable, quiniPrats lets you set up a private prediction league with friends in a couple of minutes and follow the standings round by round. With Racing, Depor and Málaga back among the elite, August offers plenty of excuses to start arguing about results in the group chat again.