La Liga’s 2026-27 season opens on Saturday with Deportivo Alavés hosting Getafe, but Barcelona will not play a competitive match for another eight days. Hansi Flick’s side are 1.76 favourites on Cloudbet’s La Liga 2026-27 outright winner board as they chase a third consecutive title, and they begin it having loaned out a club captain and lost the striker who defined their attack for four seasons.
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Why Barcelona Start Late
La Liga’s opening round stretches from August 15 all the way to August 27 this season. Clubs with players who reached the World Cup semi-finals were permitted to postpone their matchday one fixture, and Barcelona had ten players involved at that stage. Their scheduled matchday one game against Athletic Club at the Spotify Camp Nou has been moved to Thursday August 27.
That makes a matchday two trip to Elche on Sunday August 23 at the Martínez Valero Barcelona’s first competitive appearance of the campaign. Four days later they host Athletic Club, and on Monday August 31 Rayo Vallecano visit the Camp Nou for matchday three. Three league matches in eight days, with the first of them arriving over a week after the season has already begun elsewhere.
Real Madrid are in the same position for the same reason. José Mourinho, back for a second spell at the club and signed through 2029 after leaving Benfica, takes his side to Espanyol on August 22.
What Barcelona Have Lost
Ronald Araújo joined Liverpool on a season-long loan, confirmed by both clubs on August 11. The Uruguayan was named one of Barcelona’s club captains earlier this year and had signed a contract running to 2031, having made 213 appearances, scored 14 goals and won three La Liga titles at the club.
The structure of the deal matters more than the word loan suggests. Liverpool pay no loan fee, cover Araújo’s salary in full for the season, and hold an option to buy at around €55m. Barcelona have taken a senior wage off the books while retaining the possibility of a substantial sale next summer.
His absence is also less severe than a captain’s exit sounds. Araújo started only 11 La Liga matches last season following an extended break from football, and Barcelona won the title anyway with 94 points.
The forward line is the more significant change. Robert Lewandowski departed when his contract expired, making this Barcelona’s first season without him since 2021-22. Ferran Torres and Lamine Yamal shared the club’s league scoring lead last season on 16 goals each, so the goals were already being distributed more widely than in previous years.
Barcelona’s Remaining Business
Barcelona’s ambition at the top of the market is documented. ESPN reported that Manchester City rejected a Barcelona offer for Rodri worth a reported $58m, a pursuit connected to a long-term injury to Frenkie de Jong. ESPN has separately reported Arsenal monitoring Jules Koundé.
Those two stories point the same direction. Barcelona are trying to strengthen at the top of the squad while fielding interest in players already in it, which describes a club managing a wage bill rather than one spending without constraint.
Flick himself is settled. He agreed terms to stay until 2028 after delivering the 2025-26 title with 94 points, sealed by a 2-0 win over Real Madrid in El Clásico. It was the club’s 29th Spanish championship and his second in two seasons in charge.
There is a World Cup dimension too. Spain won the tournament, with Ferran Torres scoring in extra time in the final, and eight Barcelona players were part of the winning squad. The staggered league start protects those players through August. It does nothing for them in October, which is where squad depth stops being an abstraction.
How the La Liga Title Market Is Priced
Barcelona are 1.76 to win La Liga 2026-27 on Cloudbet’s outright winner board, with Real Madrid at 2.19 and Atlético Madrid a distant third at 17.3. Athletic Bilbao, Real Betis and Villarreal are all 102, Real Sociedad 153 and Celta Vigo 255. Getafe, Rayo Vallecano, Sevilla and Valencia sit at 510, and the three promoted clubs, Deportivo La Coruña, Málaga and Racing Santander, are at 991 alongside Alavés, Elche, Espanyol, Levante and Osasuna. Prices are correct at the time of writing and subject to movement.
Those top two prices imply roughly 57 percent for Barcelona and 46 percent for Real Madrid before accounting for the margin built into every selection, which is why the pair sums beyond 100 percent. Separately, and not as a Cloudbet price, the Opta supercomputer put Barcelona’s chance of winning the league at 45.6 percent.
The gap between the top two has widened recently. An earlier snapshot of the same market had Barcelona at 1.92 and Real Madrid at 2.05, so Barcelona have shortened and Madrid have drifted, and that movement happened across the period in which Barcelona loaned out a club captain.
An outright winner market resolves once, on the final table after 38 matches, which makes it more responsive to squad composition than to any individual result. A completed signing or a confirmed departure in late August changes the assumed floor of a squad across a whole season, and that is the kind of information a season-long price reacts to.
Once Barcelona start, the schedule gives them no room to settle: Elche away on August 23, Athletic Club at home four days later, Rayo Vallecano four days after that. Three league matches in eight days, with the window still open around them. Cloudbet’s La Liga 2026-27 outright winner board carries a price on all 20 clubs, with match and goals markets on every fixture.
