Wycombe will host Rotherham in their first-ever match in the Championship on the opening weekend of the 2020-21 English Football League season. The pair, both promoted from League One, will meet on 12 September – six weeks later than the season was due to start because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Relegated Bournemouth host Blackburn, while Watford welcome Middlesbrough and Norwich are away at Huddersfield. Coventry, who were League One champions on points per game, visit Bristol City. For both the Sky Blues and Rotherham it will mark their first competitive league matches in six months, after the 2019-20 EFL season was originally suspended on 13 March because of the coronavirus outbreak.
The third- and fourth-tier campaigns were eventually curtailed following a vote by clubs in June, although the play-offs were still able to go ahead as planned, with Wycombe beating Oxford at Wembley to win promotion. There will have been fewer than 40 days between the end of the last Championship campaign and the start of the new one, after Fulham concluded the English domestic season with victory over Brentford in the second-tier play-off final on 4 August.
Matches at the start of the 2020-21 season, which officially begins on 5 September with ties in the Carabao Cup first round, are to remain behind closed doors because of the ongoing impact of the pandemic.
