Everton 2025/26 fixtures reveal truth over Hill Dickinson stadium delay as positive omen emerges

After starting their historic final season at Goodison Park at home to Brighton & Hove Albion, it’s the Seagulls who provide the first competitive opponents for Everton’s new era at Hill Dickinson Stadium and old master David Moyes has already got one over on young upstart Fabian Hurzeler.

When the sides last met at the Amex Stadium on January 25, the Blues triumphed 1-0 through Iliman Ndiaye’s penalty – with the visitors’ match-winner curiously cautioned for flapping his arms like a Seagulls’ wings for his celebration – as the Premier League’s elder statesman got one over on the youngest boss in the division, who is almost 30 years his junior.

The south coast success was the first of five away triumphs for Moyes since his return, but with four of those being close to water, with wins at Nottingham Forest by the banks of the Trent, and Fulham by the banks of the Thames, and the final day victory at Newcastle not too far from the Tyne, the hope must be that after 133 years at Goodison Park (where they only record five Premier League wins in 2024/25, the joint lowest total in their history along with 1957/58), they will soon be feeling at home by the Mersey. In recent years when the club has been struggling on and off the pitch, it’s been the herculean efforts of the Evertonians in the stands who have dragged the team over the line, and now playing in a stadium that is a third bigger than ‘The Grand Old Lady,’ with a 52,888 capacity, the Blues have the opportunity to play in front of the biggest regular crowds in their history (they have only ever once topped the 50,000 figure for an average attendance across a season, 51,603 for the 1962/63 title-winning campaign).

There is still plenty of work to be done when it comes to reshaping Everton’s squad for the first season of their new dawn – the number of recruits required might stretch into double figures – but after a generation of strife and falling behind the game’s elite, the Blues, backed by The Friedkin Group, are now starting to put the tools in place to compete again at the sharp end. Liverpool will always remain a village though when it comes to speculation running rife though, especially when it comes to football, and those rumours suggesting that Everton would be starting with a block of away fixtures proved scurrilous.

Given that stadium constructors Laing O’Rourke handed over the keys to the club back in December and there had even been a debate as to whether the Blues could have move into their new home mid-season in 2024/25, it always seemed far-fetched that they’d be asking for extra time to do the finishing touches now, especially when you consider that there were test events at Bramley-Moore Dock way back in February and March.

Everton will be hitting the road at three key points of the campaign though as not only do they start and finish (at Tottenham, a full 21 months after their last visit) away, their festive fixture (not Boxing Day this year) is at Burnley on December 27.

One of the old adages is that you don’t want to go to a newly promoted side early on when their tails are up, so it looks like a testing start for the Blues having to play at Leeds United in their opening match, especially with it being a televised night-time kick-off. FA Cup semi-finals against Tottenham Hotspur apart, Elland Road has seldom been a happy hunting ground for Everton, but thanks to some Wayne Rooney inspiration, Moyes did steer them to a first league win there in 51 years back in 2002.

Fans always seem to pick out sequences that are deemed either easy or difficult but in truth, the fluctuations of form and fortune often fall somewhere in between. That said, the Blues appear to have a tough run either side of Easter as they face all of last season’s top four in a six-game sequence, but while that starts away to Arsenal on March 14, they are then at home to Chelsea (March 21), Liverpool (April 18) and Manchester City (May 2).

The day the fixtures are revealed is always a special day on the football calendar. Not only is there the anticipation and hope of what lies ahead but from a practical point of view for match-going supporters, the opportunity to plan your diary and plot your movements for the best part of the coming year.

This year is extra special for Evertonians though. You could call it a ‘once in a lifetime’ moment but it’s more than that. It’s actually the past 30 years when Everton have endured a record-breaking silverware drought that are the anomaly in their history but after all the near-misses to where they might have dropped to before their recent changes, now should be the time to look forwards to the future with a renewed optimism.

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