La Liga to introduce fully automated offside decisions next season

Martin Macdonald

• 10 Mar 2026 10:15 CDT
• 4 min read

News

La Liga will introduce fully-automated offside decisions starting from next season, according to president Javier Tebas.

At the moment, the Spanish top-flight uses semi-automated offside calls which means human error can still play a part. Starting from 2026/27, the competition will use FIFA-approved microchips in balls that will alert officials whenever a player is offside.

Even though, at the moment, officials are aided by technology, they still use their own eyes to determine offside via screen frames. It has been determined that the lines used for offside can sometimes get confused if there is a high density of players inside the box at the time of the incident.

Tebas wants to fully eliminate the possibility of human error.

"We are implementing, we'll see if it's ready for next year, automatic offside," Tebas said at a meeting between La Liga, the RFEF, and the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA).

"Currently, there's semi-automatic, but I don't like 'semi'. It would involve putting a chip inside the ball, approved by FIFA, to detect when the ball is struck. This requires a special camera system in the stadiums.

"It would be an automatic offside system, eliminating the need for the famous frames. Approval is still pending, as is reviewing the different ball brands used in the leagues... it all needs to be coordinated. But it's one of the technological objectives we're setting for next season."

Fans can expect some teething problems with this as significant investment will be required in every La Liga stadium to accommodate all of the high-speed cameras required for automated offsides to function.

La Liga plans foreign expansion

La Liga's controversial plans to hold a fixture in the United States are apparently not dead.

This season, Barcelona were scheduled to play Villarreal in Miami and when those plans were announced, there was outrage among fans, coaches and players.

The two Spanish sides were set to make history as the fixture would have been the first time that a Primera Division match took place on foreign soil.

La Liga insisted that the plans were put in motion in order to help grow Spanish football to a new audience, though there was obviously a financial incentive also.

Both clubs were set to receive around €6 million, though the Yellow Submarine would have been compensated for a loss in ticket revenue as it is officially their home fixture.

The main criticism pointed to the fact the home and away balance of the season would have been skewed. The match was Villarreal's home game, but playing in Miami would have undoubtedly seen more Barcelona fans present at the match.

In the opinion of other clubs, Real Madrid in particular, that gave the Blaugrana a sporting advantage over their competitors as they effectively would have played 19 home matches even if one was in the United States.

Following the outcry, La Liga announced the cancellation of the fixture during Villarreal's Champions League match against Manchester City in October.

La Liga president Javier Tebas is defiant, though, and insists fixtures will take place in the United States in the future.

"We are going to try again. I'm not sure when. We have to bring it up at the right time," Tebas told reporters at the Financial Times Business of Football Summit.

"I don't think it will cause damage. We are talking about one match out of 380 in a season."

He believes it is inevitable that European football matches wll eventually be played abroad as there is already sports coming from the other direction, with NBA and NFL matches having already been held in Europe.

"We celebrate Halloween, which we never celebrated 20 years ago. We have NFL games. We have NBA games," Tebas explained.

"Let's see if 50 years from now we'll have the stadiums empty, and the ones for the NBA and the NFL full. Because they don't bring just one game, they all bring many games. They don't come to Europe on vacation, they come to get fans to sign television deals, to get children for their competitions.

"In other words, we opened the doors to Europe. Instead, the United States, which opens the doors for us to go, we close them here in Europe."

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