2020–21 Premier League

The 2020–21 Premier League is the 29th season of the Premier League, the top English professional league for association football clubs since its establishment in 1992. Liverpool are the defending champions, having won their nineteenth league title the previous season, their first in the Premier League era. The season was initially scheduled to start on 8 August, but this was delayed until 12 September as a consequence of the postponement of the previous season's conclusion due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

It was scheduled to be the second Premier League season to have a mid-season break in February, whereby five games of a normal round of ten would be played on one weekend and the remaining five the following weekend. However, due to the late start of the league and fixture congestion, the winter break was scrapped. It is also the second Premier League season to use VAR (Video Assistant Referee).

At the start of this season, as was the case at the end of the previous season, there was limited or no attendance at matches besides each team's staff and personnel.On 23 November 2020, it was announced that some fans would be allowed to return to stadiums in low-risk areas at the end of the second national lockdown on 2 December 2020. The announcement of a third national lockdown on 4 January 2021, though, signalled a return to matches being played behind closed doors. On 22 February 2021, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced as the third step of recovery from the lockdown imposed on 4 January, that subject to certain criteria being met on vaccines, infection rates and new coronavirus variants, large football stadiums would be allowed to reopen on 17 May with a maximum of 10,000 spectators.

Teams
Twenty teams compete in the league – the top seventeen teams from the previous season and the three teams promoted from the Championship. The promoted teams are Leeds United, West Bromwich Albion and Fulham, after respective top flight absences of sixteen, two and one years. They replaced Bournemouth, Watford (both teams relegated after five years in the top flight), and Norwich City (relegated after only a year back in the top flight).