The matches worth a trip.

Barcelona are back-to-back champions, and they clinched last season's title by beating Real Madrid. Madrid's reply was to bring José Mourinho back to the Bernabéu: the biggest rivalry in football, with its most combustible manager back in the middle of it.

Schalke won promotion, so the Revierderby is back in the Bundesliga for the first time since 2023: the most feverish rivalry in German football, thirty miles of the Ruhr that stop speaking to each other for a week. Don't miss anything else here before you miss this.

Atlético put five past Real Madrid the last time this got serious, Julián Álvarez's free kick the pick of them, their heaviest derby win in 75 years. Now José Mourinho takes over the visitors' dugout for the return.

PSG arrive as back-to-back kings of Europe, having beaten Arsenal in the final, and French champions again. Marseille, the eternal challenger, just want to make Le Classique a contest.

Hamburg, 'der Dino,' ever-present in the Bundesliga until 2018, clawed back to the top flight last season after seven years down, restoring one of Germany's oldest, angriest rivalries. The Nordderby is a fixture again, and it lost none of its venom.

Two clubs heading opposite ways. City open the post-Guardiola era under Enzo Maresca, while United arrive resurgent under Michael Carrick and back in the Champions League. Telling that neither is champion: Arsenal ended a 22-year wait for that.

Bayern won the Bundesliga again and the gap to Dortmund only seems to grow. Der Klassiker has become less a title decider than Dortmund's shot at finally landing a blow on Harry Kane's Bayern.

Inter are reigning Serie A champions. Milan have handed their rebuild to Rúben Amorim, straight from his short, unhappy spell at Manchester United. Two clubs sharing the San Siro and nothing else.

Porto are champions again. Benfica watched them lift it, then lost José Mourinho to Real Madrid. O Clássico, Portugal's biggest match, both giants recalibrating.

Italy's grudge match with the gap stretched. Inter arrive as champions, Juventus off the pace and needing the Derby d'Italia to feel like a title fight again.

Both Lisbon giants spent last season chasing the Porto team that took their crown, and both are rebuilding, Benfica after Mourinho's exit to Madrid. O Dérbi still splits the capital.

PSV ran off with the Eredivisie while Ajax endured a season to forget and scraped into Europe through a playoff. De Topper, with the balance of Dutch power tilted hard toward Eindhoven.

Galatasaray against Fenerbahçe splits Istanbul across the Bosphorus, Europe versus Asia, and reliably produces one of the most hostile atmospheres in world football.

Roma didn't just beat Lazio twice last season, they humiliated them, winning the first derby against nine men and closing the year with a Mancini brace. Gasperini has Roma back in the Champions League while Lazio try to prove the derby is still a contest.

Celtic won a fifth straight title and the double with 74-year-old Martin O'Neill coaxed out of retirement. Rangers finished third, behind Hearts, and hired Hearts' own Derek McInnes to close the gap. Britain's fiercest derby, as raw as ever.

Olympiacos versus Panathinaikos: Piraeus port against the Athens hills, decades of genuine loathing, and a wall of flares most leagues would abandon the match over. Greece's fiercest rivalry.

The pecking order flipped last season: Manchester United did the double over Liverpool, Kobbie Mainoo's late winner sealing their Champions League return. England's grandest rivalry, with United resurgent for the first time in years.

Arsenal battered Tottenham 4-1 twice on their way to a first title in 22 years. For Spurs, the north London derby has become the fixture that measures how far ahead their neighbours have pulled.

The derby has a new home. After 130 years and 120 meetings at Goodison Park, Everton now host Liverpool at their dock-side stadium. A mile apart, a fixture as tense as any in England, moved to fresh ground.

Halfway through the Allsvenskan, the derby carries live table stakes. Surprise leaders Sirius have run clear at the top, and AIK (3rd) and Djurgården (5th, with games in hand) are scrapping to be best placed to chase them down. Djurgården took the first meeting 4-2; the winner here gains real ground.

Club Brugge sealed a twentieth Belgian title and steamrolled Anderlecht in the championship play-offs, 4-2 then 3-1, after Anderlecht had drawn first blood in the autumn. Anderlecht churned through three coaches last season and arrive desperate to prove the gap on the champions has closed.

Sunderland's return ended a near-decade exile for the Tyne-Wear derby, and in their first season back they did the double over Newcastle, 1-0 then 2-1. Now the Magpies want the city back. No fixture in England runs on more raw contempt.

The old Clásico with a new-old face: José Mourinho is back in the Real Madrid dugout for the first time in over a decade. Across the pitch, an Athletic side that just returned to the Champions League and, pointedly, kept Nico Williams out of Barcelona's hands. Madrid did the double at San Mamés and the Bernabéu last season.

The freshest grudge in Danish football. FC Copenhagen's league season collapsed, but they salvaged Europe by beating Brøndby in a winner-takes-the-continental-spot playoff, denying their oldest enemy a place on the continent. Both sets of fans carry that into the new season.

The League of Ireland's loudest night: Shamrock Rovers and Bohemians, two of Dublin's oldest clubs a few miles and a century of needle apart. Proof the great derbies aren't only the famous ones.

Two 0-0 draws last season, and the story has shifted underneath the fixture. Allegri has left Milan for Napoli, Milan restart under Rúben Amorim, Juventus under Spalletti. Two fallen giants rebuilding, both with a point to prove.

A reset Klassieker. Ajax were humbled to fifth and are rebuilding under a brand-new manager, while Feyenoord finished as the strongest challenger to champions PSV. An early referendum on which neighbour is actually going somewhere.

Torino clawed back a two-goal deficit to draw 2-2 in the season finale and took four points off a stumbling Juventus last term. The Turin derby, with the little club emboldened and the giant still mid-rebuild.

The perfect grudge-swap. Spalletti, who ended Napoli's 33-year title wait, is now in the Juventus dugout; Allegri, Juve's five-time title-winner, now runs Napoli. Each man walks out to face the club he made his name at.

A revenge arc in a single season. Lyon mugged ten-man Marseille with a late own goal in August; Aubameyang tore it back with two goals in the final nine minutes to win 3-2 at the Vélodrome. The series finished level, both games decided at the death, a Champions League place riding on it.

They finished second and third and traded blows: Napoli won in Rome to go top, Roma clawed a 2-2 at the Maradona. Both turned on an old wound, Leonardo Spinazzola, the ex-Roma full-back, scoring against his former club yet again.

Derek McInnes gave Aberdeen their last major trophy across eight years as their manager, and now walks back into Pittodrie in the away dugout, as the Rangers boss. His new side won all three meetings last season. Aberdeen have every reason to make the reunion hostile.

A three-act season that ended in role-reversal cruelty. Champions Porto took the opening Clássico; Sporting's revenge was dumping them out of the Taça semi-final at the Dragão, only to lose the final itself to a second-tier club. Bad blood and mutual embarrassment.

Three meetings last season, every one settled late: Fenerbahçe took the league bragging rights, Beşiktaş bloodied them in the cup with a stoppage-time winner. And both dugouts blew up early, Fenerbahçe sacking José Mourinho, Beşiktaş turning back to returning idol Sergen Yalçın.

Max Eberl spent fourteen years building Borussia Mönchengladbach and now runs Bayern as their sporting director, so every meeting is Eberl against the club he made. On the pitch it is lopsided, Bayern taking all six points last season, but a rebuilding Gladbach keep trying to land a blow on the empire their old architect commands.

The War of the Roses is a Premier League fixture again: Leeds against Manchester United, Yorkshire against Lancashire, a grudge older than either club and one of English football's most venomous.

Nico Williams turned Barcelona down to stay in Bilbao, a public snub to the champions, then watched Barça beat Athletic home and away, the San Mamés game settled by Lamine Yamal, the teenager Barça built around instead of him. The one who stayed against the one they kept.

Austria Wien owned the derby last season, three wins and a draw, with Rapid failing to win a single one of the four meetings. The 350th edition, a 2-0 for Austria, bumped them above Rapid in the final table. Rapid arrive with a year of derby humiliation to answer.

They split last season one win each, but Standard's 2-0 in February is the one that mattered: it got Anderlecht's manager sacked the same day. A financially battered Standard, rebuilt after exiting the 777 Partners ownership mess, showed it can still wreck Anderlecht's season.

Örgryte are back in the top flight after sixteen years, reviving Sweden's oldest derby for the first time since 2009, and the reunion was so heated it had to be finished over two days after a fire in the IFK end. IFK edged it 3-2; the rematch has a score to settle, with Örgryte fighting the drop.

Köln's promotion last season restored the Rheinderby, and it delivered: Gladbach won the reunion 3-1, then couldn't hold a 3-3 barnburner in the 100th Bundesliga meeting. An even split leaves the oldest rivalry in the Rhineland wide open.

Galatasaray steamrolled to a fourth straight title behind Victor Osimhen, and the 1-1 at Rams Park was one of the only points anyone prised off them all season. For Beşiktaş, under returning boss Sergen Yalçın, the champions are the measuring stick.

The Paris derby is a fixture again after Paris FC's promotion ended a 46-year absence, and the LVMH-backed newcomers made their return count: two wins in three against Qatari PSG last season, dumping them out of the Coupe de France and beating the champions on the final day. Two clubs a street apart, no longer a novelty.

Fiorentina did the double on Juventus last season, winning 2-0 in Turin, and their old boy Rolando Mandragora scored against his former club in both meetings. Add the eternal Vlahović grudge and it's Viola-versus-traitor theatre every time.

Barça signed Espanyol's own academy keeper Joan García off his release clause, then he kept a clean sheet against his boyhood club as the champions swept both derbies. The one they lost to the rich neighbour is now the derby's live nerve.

They met at Wembley in last season's FA Cup semi-final, Enzo Fernández settling it 1-0 to send Chelsea to the final and Leeds home gutted. Layer that onto a grudge forged in the mud of the 1970 final and the league meeting has a fresh score to settle.

Little-brother Sparta went to De Kuip and won a seven-goal thriller 4-3, after being smashed 4-0 in the first meeting, Feyenoord's most embarrassing home result of a runners-up season. Rotterdam's other derby suddenly has bite.