Per our own John Gunning's reporting for the Japan Times, and the X League website, X League Chairman Ken Namikawa, has announced that its new top-tier competition, the X Premier League, will officially kick off on May 3, 2026, with the opening day ceremonies and competition scheduled for the Tokyo Dome. The confirmation came during a January 3 press conference at the same historic baseball venue, prior to the kickoff of the Rice Bowl.
Though the concept of the X-Premier was unveiled last August, this announcement marks the first full outline of how the new season will take shape. The league will begin play in early May and continue through early July, after which the league will take a two-month summer break (the heat is unbearable during that time of the year). The games then resume around late August or early September to complete the regular season. In this inaugural season of X Premiere, 11 teams will compete, with each slated to play 10 games. Additional details, including the opening day matchup, will be released at a later date.
Once the regular season concludes, the top six teams will advance to the playoffs beginning in late November. The journey will culminate at the 80th Rice Bowl, scheduled for January 3, 2027, at the Tokyo Dome, where the X Premier gridiron champion will be crowned. Side note, ideally the champion of X Premier would next enter into a round robin tournament with the champions from Europe and Mexico for the inaugural Intercontinental Gridiron Cup, but for now that competition still remains a dream and work of fiction in this writer's head.
For this new league structure, X Premiere will begin under a "licensing system", allowing for the possibility of future expansion should additional clubs meet the new league's competitive and structural standards. Which thus brings the question to many who follow the X League, "what about the Suns?" Well, suffice it to say that they did not meet all the criteria to qualify, and thus the premier league will not have a presence in Fukuoka or Western Japan for the 2026 season. Another factor for future expansion is the stagnant economy here in Japan, which in just the last three years has slipped to number six globally, right behind that of California.
The 11 teams set to compete in the inaugural X-Premier season are:
Panasonic Impulse
Obic Seagulls
Sekisui Challengers
Nojima Sagamihara Rise
Fujitsu Frontiers
Tokyo Gas Creators
Elecom Kobe Finies
IBM Big Blue
Fujifilm Ebina Minerva AFC
All Mitsubishi Lions
OrientalBio Silver Star
In many respects, the gridiron game in Japan stands where American football once stood in its formative decades in the United States — as a niche sport in a nation where baseball garners all the attention and money. Behind baseball are soccer, rugby and basketball, which combined compose the four major sports of Japan. The X League is a semi-professional sport, where the imports are paid and the Japanese players play for love of the game, and those Japanese players play with a heart and ethos that is the respect of every import who has ever played here in Japan.
The semi-professional ethos X League is not bush league though, as the commitment and love of the sport by the Japanese players helps to bridge the distance between limited resources and big dreams. Thus, much like the early days of the National Football League, at the heart of the X League is a structure built by people who have loved the sport enough to sustain it, and hopefully with this new commitment, grow it, and steadily shape it into something larger.
Lastly, the X League also still comprises the lower tier X1 Area, X2 and X3, which we plan on covering much more indepth in print here online and on the podcast for the 2026 season, as well as the college game, which has a deep history here in Japan. In essence we intend to be the Gridiron Japan News Hub and be the premiere source of English language Japanese gridiron news. And Mark Perry there at UFL News Porn Hub, if you are listening or reading, when the UFL fades from memory you are always welcome to write for us and be a contributor ;-).
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