THE 2025 NAB AFLW season will begin the week of August 11, with 12 rounds to be played over 12 weeks.
The divisive compressed part of the fixture will not feature next year, but the AFL is yet to rule out mid-week footy.
With an extra round of football guaranteed by the Collective Bargaining Agreement, the AFL has shifted away from the "clean air" afforded by the pre-finals bye in the men's competition, with the AFLW set to overlap with rounds 23, 24 and finals.
The start of pre-season will be Monday, May 19, while the Grand Final will be played on Saturday, November 29, the same weekend as this year's night edition.
As flagged by AFL.com.au last month, clubs had been consulted by the AFL as to their thoughts around pushing further back into August.
"When I started, it became really apparent to me quickly that people said we need stability, we need routine and we need ritual. So I think I made that commitment really early on, when we would deliver stability, and we'd deliver the fixture timing as early as possible," AFLW general manager Emma Moore told Credit to the Girls.
"What I will confirm is that there'll be no compression. That was a really worthwhile thing to investigate and understand what we could do and there were some good learnings out of that, but there were also some really clear learnings about a desire to not repeat that kind of approach again.
"One of the positive [pieces of] feedback and one of the things we really learnt was that the clubs really liked to be able to travel and play a couple of games in a row. One of the things we heard that people didn't like was having to play back-to-back without enough of a break between games, and there were concerns about wear and tear.
"That was pretty clear. I think the other part of it – which we really wanted to understand – was what would it do for attendance and viewership, and it had some real benefits for viewership, without a doubt, but attendance it really impacted in some ways. We don't want to impact people being able to get to our games."
Moore would not be drawn on ruling mid-week footy in or out of the 2025 fixture, citing feedback from clubs that they would not be adverse to it, on the proviso of suitable breaks between games.
"The full detail of the fixture will come out post the Grand Final, as we always do," she said.
"It was to do with the period between games that was important for them, and there was appetite to look at fixturing games in the days and times around that."
With 18 games of AFL and AFLW to be played each weekend in rounds one and two of the women's competition, double-headers appear firmly on the cards, as does extending that concept to the AFLW and VFL/W finals.
"We will be considered, number one, and creative, number two. What's the objective here, to get W in front of as many people as we can possibly can," Moore said.
"One thing we're absolutely considering is what the home and away games look like in local areas where we know those local markets drive really passionate and connected audiences that can access it.
"I think there's heaps of opportunities in terms of double-headers, and they can look like a lot of things. Double-headers can look like a curtain-raiser with your local clubs or second-tier leagues, Grand Finals or finals being played as a curtain-raiser to the women's game. It can look like men's and women's playing at the same venue, back-to-back, as well.
"We're not putting anything off the table right now, we're working it out. It'll be a balance between what builds that home crowd-club-fanatic growth, and also what builds that big-scale growth for the rest of the sports audience.
"We will continue to interrogate [increasing overlap with AFL and AFLW]. What the fixture timing we've announced just now will do will give us an opportunity to test that, let's see how much of that cross-over audience we can unlock."
