On August 8, 2025, M-League released the schedule for the upcoming 2025-26 season. They also announced additions and adjustments to both the team and individual award prizes.
New Prizes
Starting in the 2025-26 season, the top prize for the championship winning team will be increased to ¥70,000,000 (up from ¥50,000,000 the previous season). In addition, the 4th place team in the finals will now receve a prize of ¥5,000,000. The prize for 2nd place and 3rd place in the finals will remain at ¥20,000,000 and ¥10,000,000, respectively. The prize for the top team in the regular season remains at ¥3,000,000.
For the individual awards, there is now a new award: most 1sts. The player with the most 1sts in the regular season will receive a ¥1,000,000 prize. This is in addition to the existing MVP award (¥2,000,000), highest hanchan (¥1,000,000) and 4th avoidance award (¥1,000,000).
Starting this season, players must play a minimum of 20 games and a maximum of 40 games, up from the previous 10 game minimum and down from the previous 45 game maximum. The 20-game minimum is also the minimum number of games to be eligible for the individual awards.
Schedule
With the addition of the Earth Jets, M-League has increased the number of games during the regular season to 300 games total (120 games per team).
To accomodate this, M-League will have simultaneous games being played on Thursdays and Fridays from September 25 to February 20.
The format of the semifinals and the finals will remain the same. The top 6 teams in the regular season will play 30 games total (20 games each). The top 4 teams from the semifinals will then go on and play 16 games to determine the champion.
The M-League 2025-26 regular season will start on Monday, September 15, 2025.
Full schedule image (from m-league.jp)
For your convenience, I have created a Google Calendar of the schedule (with times in JST), as well as one for each team. There is also an iCalendar (.ics) file that you can download to put the schedule on your computer’s calendar.
Any mistakes are purely my own. If there is any discrepancy between the calendar and the official M-League schedule, the official M-League schedule is correct.
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