Registration for the 2026/27 season of the Racks Winter Pool League is now closed. Thank you to all of the teams who have registered and shown their support for the league. The new season is scheduled to begin on the 29th and 30th September and the fixtures will be out in the coming weeks.

We have received a number of proposals for rule changes. The committee will now go through those proposals and put them forward for teams to vote on before the new season begins.

We originally planned to limit the number of registrations to sixty teams to give us three divisions of ten teams on each night, but after viewing an idea put forward by the Racks Summer Pool League and seeing the positive feedback that idea received, we decided to allow 32 teams to register on each night.

There will now be four divisions on each night with eight teams in each division. We are frequently getting more teams winning promotion and being unable to compete in the division above, most noticeably for teams promoted to the Wednesday Premier Division. As a result, teams and players have become reluctant to play after winning promotion. By creating an extra division on each night and reducing the number of teams in each division, we hope that this will allow teams to be more competitive and for the divisions to be more evenly balanced.

With a reduction in the number of teams in each division there will be fewer matches for teams. To counter this we will be changing the format of the team knockout competitions as follows:

• Both nights will continue to have their own team knockout competitions.
• All 32 teams on each night will be placed into a single group.
• Each team will play four group stage matches with each of the four matches being against a team from each of the four divisions. These matches will be drawn at random.
• All 15 frames will be played to give teams a full match night. A team will receive three points for a win. Frame difference will decide a team's position in the final group standings should they be level on points with another team.
• At the end of the group stage, the top sixteen teams will advance to the knockout stages of the main competition. The bottom sixteen teams will go into the knockout stages of the plate competition.
• The draws for the first knockout rounds will be seeded based on where each team finished in the group stage. For example, in the main competition the team that finished 1st will play the team that finished 16th, the team that finished 2nd will play the team that finished 15th, etc... In the plate competition the team that finished 17th will play the team that finished 32nd, the team that finished 18th will play the team that finished 31st, etc...
• All of the matches in the subequent rounds will be drawn at random.

By changing the format of the team knockout competitions, this will give every team a guaranteed five matches to add to their existing fourteen league matches.