FPL Wildcard Chip: Everything You Need to Know

Wildcard is the reset button. When your squad’s gone stale, injuries have piled up, or the fixture list has completely turned against you, it lets you rebuild from scratch without losing a single point. Here’s how it works and how to get the timing right.

What Is the Wildcard Chip in FPL?

Every transfer you make normally costs 4 points after your first free one. Wildcard removes that cost entirely for one gameweek, letting you make as many transfers as you like, completely free, while still working within your normal squad budget.

Unlike Free Hit, the changes you make on a Wildcard are permanent. Whatever squad you build stays with you going forward, it doesn’t revert the following week.

How To Use Your Wilcard in FPL

Go to the Transfers page and activate Wildcard before making your changes. From there, transfer as many players as you want in and out, same £100m-style budget, same squad rules (max three players per team, valid formation), just with the usual 4-point hit removed. Once you’re happy, confirm your transfers to lock the Wildcard in.

This is the one chip you want to be certain about before confirming. Once activated and saved, it can’t be cancelled, so there’s no undoing a Wildcard once it’s gone through.

The Rules

• You get two Wildcards across the season: one available before the Gameweek 19 deadline, and a second that unlocks after it.
• Chips don’t carry over. An unused first Wildcard is lost once the Gameweek 19 deadline passes.
• Any transfers you make under a Wildcard are free, however many you make, and any points hits you’d otherwise be carrying are wiped when you activate it.
• Your banked free transfer (if you had one saved) is preserved and still available the following week.
• Only one chip can be active per gameweek, so it can’t be combined with Bench Boost, Free Hit, or Triple Captain.
• Once confirmed, a Wildcard cannot be cancelled or undone.

When to Use Your Wildcard in FPL

Wildcard earns its keep when the gap between your current squad and your ideal squad has grown too wide to fix with one or two normal transfers. That usually shows up as a run of bad fixtures across several of your players at once, a squad that’s carrying two or three injuries or suspensions, or simply a squad built early in the season that no longer reflects who’s actually in form.

A common pattern is using the first Wildcard reasonably early, once the picture from the opening few gameweeks has settled and it’s clear which promoted teams and early risers are worth building around, rather than rushing it in Gameweek 1 or 2 before there’s enough data to go on. The second Wildcard tends to get saved for a turning point in the run-in, repositioning the squad for a strong finish once fixtures swing back in your favour, or setting up for a Double Gameweek push alongside Bench Boost.

There’s no fixed “correct” week for either one. The signal to watch for is your own squad, not the calendar: if you’re making two or three separate hits just to fix ongoing problems, that’s usually the point where a Wildcard would have been cheaper.

Common Mistakes

The biggest mistake is playing it too early, before there’s enough form and fixture data to build a squad that’ll actually hold up. The second is treating it as a free pass to chase last week’s top scorers rather than sticking to the same form-plus-fixtures thinking you’d use for a normal transfer, just applied to more players at once. And because it can’t be cancelled, confirming it in a rush without checking team news or price changes first is a mistake that can’t be walked back.

Wildcard FAQ

Does Wildcard affect my Free Transfer count? No, any free transfers you’ve banked are kept and carry over to the following gameweek as normal.

Can I use my Wildcard and then change my mind about a transfer afterward? Once the Wildcard transfers are confirmed, they’re locked in as normal transfers going forward, further changes after that point would cost points as usual (unless you play another chip).

Do I have to make transfers to activate a Wildcard? You need to activate it before making changes for those changes to be free, but there’s no minimum number of transfers required.

What happens if I don’t use my first Wildcard before Gameweek 19? It expires and is lost. It doesn’t roll into your second Wildcard, so you’d only have one left for the rest of the season.