The German Bundesliga promotion/relegation play-off still has not been decided as the Bundesliga enters its final matchday of the 2025/26 season on Saturday, May 16.
Seven of the nine fixtures on the final day still have some meaning for at least one of the teams involved, with regard to either European qualification or the relegation battle.
In this piece, we will put our attention on the Bundesliga promotion/relegation play-off.
There are three teams, the bottom three to be exact, that go into the final day with hopes of avoiding the drop, via the Bundesliga promotion/relegation play-off.
The thing that makes it so dramatic this term is that all three teams in question go into the final day with the same number of points, and two of them, FC St. Pauli and VfL Wolfsburg, will face each other on Saturday.
The Bundesliga Promotion/Relegation Play-Off: What It Is And How It Differs From Other Leagues
The Bundesliga promotion/relegation play-off is unique to the German top-flight, compared to the way other top European leagues handle promotion and relegation.
In it, the 16th (third from bottom) team in the top flight take on the third-place finisher from Bundesliga 2 in a two-legged home and away tie to determine the identity of the last team to play in the German top-flight the following season.
In other leagues at the top of the European game, there is a definite number of teams that get promoted or relegated; often, it is three.
If that were the case in the Bundesliga, there would be no excitement in terms of the relegation battle this season anymore, since we know that St. Pauli, 1. FC Heidenheim and Wolfsburg will all finish in the bottom three, and they would have all been automatically relegated.
As it is, there is still a chance for one of those three teams to save themselves through the Bundesliga promotion/relegation play-off. There is a high possibility that they secure the win, as historically the top-flight sides have had the upper hand in this season-defining match-up.
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The Bundesliga Promotion/Relegation Play-Off: Advantages Of The System
We have already mentioned the biggest obvious advantage of having the Bundesliga promotion/relegation play-off in place, as it makes things more exciting in the battle to finish 16th and to try to avoid the drop that way.
This season, with Wolfsburg facing off against St. Pauli and Heidenheim taking on already safe Mainz 05, it promises to be a relegation battle for the ages on that final day.
There is also the general excitement of the play-off matches. Despite the top-flight side’s historical advantage we cited above, the Bundesliga promotion/relegation play-off encounters usually tend to be tight affairs.
It is not just that the Bundesliga 2 sides have a lot to gain; their top-flight opponents have, in fact, everything to lose.
For that reason, these play-off matches are so close most of the time, even if the extra pedigree of the higher division side usually pays off in the end, which brings us to the obvious disadvantage.
The Disadvantage Of The Bundesliga Promotion/Relegation Play-Off
Club football is about the pyramid, about the access of any team to the top, as long as they can make it there by sporting merit.
The Bundesliga promotion/relegation play-off system naturally makes that more difficult, by not giving the third-place finisher of Bundesliga 2 an automatic spot into the top-flight.
We have already talked about how many fans in Germany are romantic football purists.
For that reason, many of them dislike the Bundesliga promotion/relegation play-off, even though, particularly this season, we see the excitement it creates on the final day of the Bundesliga.
Main Photo
Credit: IMAGO / Noah Wedel
Recording Date: 09.05.2026
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