Barça will open the preseason with a friendly against Birmingham City

FC Barcelona will play the first friendly match of the 2026/27 preseason on July 31 against English side Birmingham City, in a match that will serve as the premiere for Hansi Flick’s new project before the official start of the new season and within the framework of the preseason concentration in England.

“FC Barcelona has already confirmed the first friendly match of the 2026/27 preseason. Hansi Flick’s team will face Birmingham City on July 31 at the St. Andrew’s @ Knighthead Park stadium,” the Blaugrana club announced this Wednesday in a statement.

The duel will be played at 7:45 p.m. local time (8:45 p.m. in Barcelona) in the historic stadium of the English team, inaugurated in 1906 and with capacity for more than 29,000 spectators. The friendly is part of the preparation plan designed by the coaching staff during the stage that the first team will carry out at St George’s Park between July 27 and August 3.

The rival is one of the traditional clubs of English football, currently a member of the Championship, the country’s second category, after closing last season in tenth position in the championship.

In addition to the preparatory component, the match will mark the reunion between both teams more than six decades after their last official confrontation. Barcelona and Birmingham City have met five times in official competition, all of them in the old Fairs Cup.

The precedents clearly favor the Catalan team, which managed to win three times, drew once and lost another. Among these matches, the semi-finals of the 1957/58 edition stand out, resolved in a tiebreaker match in Basel, and the 1959/60 final, won by Barça with an aggregate score of 4-1.

With this friendly in Birmingham, the team led by Flick will launch a new preseason that will officially start on July 13 and will combine work at the Ciutat Esportiva Joan Gamper with concentration in England before the start of the official competitions.