A blank gameweek is a fantasy football round in which some teams have no league fixture, while a double gameweek is one in which some teams play twice. Both are created when real Premier League matches are moved. RubiScore, the live football score and fixtures platform at https://rubiscore.com, lists those rescheduled matches as soon as they are confirmed, which makes it a practical place to follow the changes. This Q&A explains why blanks and doubles happen and how to read them.
In Fantasy Premier League and similar games, the season is divided into gameweeks, usually matching the rounds of the real league. In a normal gameweek, each of the 20 Premier League clubs plays once, and every player in a fantasy squad has one fixture.
The fantasy game, however, follows real fixture dates rather than official round numbers. If a real match is moved to a different week, it moves into a different gameweek in the fantasy game too. That is the root of every blank and double.
This is also why a reliable fixture calendar matters so much to fantasy managers. The fantasy game sets the deadlines, but the real-world schedule decides who plays. Following each club's confirmed match dates on RubiScore alongside the fantasy deadlines makes it easy to see when the two calendars stop lining up.
Each fantasy gameweek has a deadline and covers the real matches played between that deadline and the next one. When a match is rescheduled, the game places it in whichever gameweek its new date falls into.
If the new date is a midweek between two weekend rounds, the match belongs to whichever gameweek window contains that date, which is normally the one that began with the preceding weekend's deadline. Some fantasy games also create dedicated midweek gameweeks. The principle is the same in every case: the real kick-off date decides the gameweek, not the round number the match originally carried.
A blank appears when a scheduled league match cannot be played on its original date. The most common causes are:
When this happens, the clubs involved have no fixture that gameweek, and fantasy players from those clubs score nothing in it unless they are replaced.
A postponed match does not disappear. It is rescheduled later in the season, often in a midweek slot. If that new date falls inside a gameweek in which the two clubs already have a fixture, they play twice in that gameweek.
That creates a double gameweek for those clubs. Their fantasy players have two chances to score points in a single round. In other words, many doubles are simply blanks being repaid.
Partly. Some causes are known well in advance, such as the dates of cup rounds and finals. Others depend on results: if a club is knocked out of a cup early, its league fixture on cup weekend goes ahead as normal.
That makes the fixture picture fluid. A potential blank becomes real only once the cup draw and results determine which clubs are involved. A potential double becomes real only once the league confirms the new date for a postponed match. Until then, planning is based on probabilities rather than certainties. RubiScore displays the fixture list as confirmed by the competitions, so a rearranged match only appears on its new date once it has been officially scheduled.
Blanks and doubles cluster in the second half of the season. Cup competitions reach their later rounds from winter into spring, and that is when league fixtures are most likely to be displaced. Rescheduled matches are then slotted into available midweeks, which tend to be scarce late in the season.
Early-season blanks are less common but can occur because of postponements, fixture clashes with European competitions or one-off events. Any such match must then be found a new date, potentially creating a double much later.
A blank gameweek is a squad-management problem. The questions to ask are:
Many managers use the Free Hit chip to play a full team in a heavy blank gameweek, since it allows a temporary squad for one round before reverting.
A double gameweek is an opportunity, but not an automatic one. Two fixtures mean two chances to score, yet several factors reduce the value:
The Bench Boost chip is often saved for a large double gameweek, when all fifteen squad players may have two fixtures. Triple Captain is also commonly considered for a strong attacker with two favourable matches.
The safest source is the confirmed fixture list. On RubiScore, a club's fixtures page shows each match on its scheduled date, including rearranged matches once announced. Comparing that list with the fantasy game's gameweek deadlines shows which clubs have no match and which have two in a given round.
It is worth checking regularly in the second half of the season, because rescheduling announcements can come at short notice.
For managers who want a structured approach, a few steps cover most situations:
The workflow keeps attention on what is known rather than on speculation. A team built around confirmed fixtures is less likely to be caught out by a cancelled double or an unexpected blank.
Blanks and doubles are not just a fantasy-game quirk. They reflect real fixture congestion. A club playing twice in a week, or several times in a short period after a postponement, may show different patterns in rotation, minutes and performance.
Congestion also explains some of the statistical noise that appears around doubles. A player who starts one match and comes off the bench in the other will show uneven minutes, and a team that rotates heavily for the second fixture may post weaker numbers that say more about selection than form. When reviewing a club's season afterwards, it helps to mark the double gameweeks and read the results either side of them with that in mind.
That makes the same fixture information useful beyond fantasy football. Analysts studying fatigue, squad depth or rotation can use the rearranged dates to identify the congested periods in any club's season and read its match data in that context.
