On August 1, a new football season begins in Ukraine — the Ukrainian Premier League kicks off. This is the fourth edition of the championship in Ukraine under the conditions of great war. Despite shelling, air alerts, and an unstable security situation overall, Ukrainian football continues to exist and develop, having a unique experience for Europe. Just like last year, fans will be able to enjoy native football on UPL.TV, which maintains the unified broadcast pool of all matches.
First of all — about the participants. Instead of “Chornomorets”, “Inhulets”, “Left Bank”, and “Vorskla”, which were relegated to the First League based on last season’s results, four new teams joined the UPL: “Metalist 1925”, “Epitsentr”, SK “Poltava”, and “Kudrivka”. The latter is the first representative of the Chernihiv region in the elite division since the beginning of the full-scale war. Also, for the first time in 30 years, fans from Khmelnytskyi will be pleased with their own team in the Premier League — “Epitsentr”.
This year’s championship will be filled with statistical anniversaries. Thus, “Dynamo” and “Shakhtar” will play their 1000th matches in the Ukrainian championship. Both teams can also score their 2200th goals. However, Luhansk’s “Zoria” may concede their 1000th goal.
UPL.TV will preserve the unified broadcast pool of matches. Ukrainian football will be available on OTT platforms for fans both in Ukraine and abroad.
The ratings of the UPL.TV channel grew throughout the 2024/25 season, and by the end of April it broke into the top-10 ratings by the share of views through OTT among over 300 Ukrainian TV channels available to subscribers of paid OTT platforms. In April 2025, the analytical group of UPL.TV noted a 66% increase in viewer attention compared to March! And in June, UPL.TV was recognized as the best sports channel of the year in Ukraine during the VIII BigData Awards ceremony. The award from the organizers was received by the President of the Ukrainian Premier League Yevhen Dykyi and the head of UPL.TV Maksym Radchenko.
“This award is valuable to us, as is the trust of the clubs, because UPL.TV is the clubs’ channel, it is their brainchild,” says Maksym Radchenko. “Every positive step reflects positively in commercialization. A very important factor is the issue of transparency, because decisions are not made unilaterally. We hold club meetings, show them different models that can work moving forward. Clubs ask questions, some are against, some are for, but ultimately we come to a consensus together. And, thanks to the courage of our defenders, we can implement it.”
Security measures for conducting the Ukrainian Championship remain unchanged — in the event of an air alert, the referee will interrupt the match. By the way, last season such interruptions affected 38 matches. Some of them (12) started with delays of up to 95 minutes. In another 8 cases, besides delaying the start of the match, games had to be interrupted due to air alerts, and the match of the 4th round between LNZ and “Karpaty” (August 26, 2024) started 6 hours later.
In 12 matches, air alerts sounded during the game, the longest pause lasted 105 minutes.
The match between “Kryvbas” and “Shakhtar”, which started on September 1, 2024, and finished on April 16, 2025, became the longest in the history of Ukrainian and probably world football — 326,760 minutes!
But even under such extremely difficult conditions, spectators are gradually returning to the stadiums where the matches of the Ukrainian Championship take place — the UPL, with the support of UAF, received permission for this initiative from the Ministry of Youth and Sports. The sizes of quotas for stadiums depend on the capacity of shelters that can accommodate the declared number of spectators within the necessary time for their evacuation, and other security factors.
“Our main achievement is that the Ukrainian Championship is held under such conditions; all planned matches take place. The stadiums that host spectators during the war inspire players on the field and send a strong signal to the world about the resilience of the Ukrainian people. And before each match, we thank the Armed Forces for the opportunity to play football,” emphasizes UPL President Yevhen Dykyi.
Moreover, in the 2024/25 season, a total of 276,896 fans attended the UPL matches, and the match of the final round between “Karpaty” and “Zoria” gathered 6,500 viewers at the “Ukraine” stadium. This year, an even larger number of fans is expected.
The 2025/26 season will be another test of strength for Ukrainian football. However, the Ukrainian Championship will continue to develop; UPL clubs will continue to seek opportunities for modernization of infrastructure and organized activities aimed at further commercialization of the joint product.