For seventeen seasons, Victorian football clubs made the AFL premiership race feel like a members-only event. Geelong, Hawthorn, Richmond and Collingwood carved up thirteen flags between 2007 and 2023, turning the competition's showpiece into something close to a southern postcode lottery. Those days, by most credible assessments, are over.
As the AFL heads into the 2026 season, the Victorian contingent collectively presents a picture of transition. Some clubs are in deep reconstruction. Others are pressing the reset button. One or two carry the weight of ageing lists and depleted depth. The cycle, as it always does eventually, has turned.
Collingwood's 2023 premiership now looks, in hindsight, like the final act of a particular era rather than the opening chapter of another. The Magpies ran hard through the early rounds of 2025 before the Lions exposed their limitations come finals time. With veterans departing and elite young talent in short supply, it is hard to see Collingwood clawing back ground in the short term.
Richmond's list reconstruction is among the most thorough the competition has seen. Their supporters have accepted this reality with a kind of stoic dignity that speaks well of the club's culture, but it will be years before the Tigers are genuine September contenders again.
Carlton have taken a clear-eyed look at their position and made a frank admission: losing Charlie Curnow and Tom De Koning to rival clubs signals a deliberate step back from contention. The Blues have pivoted toward accumulating elite youth through father-son picks and trades, among them Jagga Smith. A top-ten finish is the realistic ceiling for now, not a top-six charge.
Melbourne, meanwhile, have drawn a line under the 2021 premiership era. Max Gawn has acknowledged the shift publicly. The exits of Christian Petracca and Clayton Oliver to expansion clubs confirmed that no dynasty was ever really forming at the Dees. New coach Steven King is pressing reset. Like Carlton, they are regrouping rather than contending.
Essendon's journey under Brad Scott has been uneven. The failed attempt by Zach Merrett to seek a trade added a layer of internal turbulence to what is already a complex cultural rebuild. Progress is being made, but the Bombers are unlikely to threaten the competition's elite clubs in 2026.
The Western Bulldogs remain one of the competition's most perplexing clubs. The talent is undeniable: Marcus Bontempelli, Sam Darcy, Ed Richards and Tom Liberatore form a nucleus that would improve most lists in the country. But their record against quality opponents raises questions that raw ability alone cannot answer. Until they hold a lead in a final against a top-four side, the doubts will linger.
Hawthorn looked well placed to press for a fourteenth premiership after back-to-back finals campaigns under Sam Mitchell. Will Day's ongoing foot and shoulder problems represent a genuine threat to those ambitions. Without Day at full fitness, Jai Newcombe carries a midfield that lacks cover at the elite level. The Hawks remain a chance, but the injury toll has complicated the equation significantly.
The season's most compelling Victorian storyline may belong to St Kilda. A series of bold recruiting moves that brought Tom De Koning, Sam Flanders, Liam Ryan and Jack Silvagni to Moorabbin has sharpened a list that was quietly accumulating youth. In the sixtieth anniversary of their only premiership, expectations should be tempered: the Saints are interesting and improving, but not yet in the same bracket as the competition's leading clubs.
Geelong, the great disruptors of draft orthodoxy, remain the most credible Victorian threat. Chris Scott has steadily blended younger players into an experienced core, and the Cats will be thereabouts. The ceiling, though, depends on whether Bailey Smith can replicate a career-best 2025 season, and whether the club can extract more from Patrick Dangerfield, Jeremy Cameron and Tom Stewart as they move deeper into their careers.
North Melbourne's rebuild under Alastair Clarkson has tested the patience of a supporter base that remembers a very different era. The runway is shortening.
The Northern Shift
Set against the Victorian picture, the clubs from north of the Murray present a sharply different outlook. Brisbane enter 2026 as the clearest premiership favourites: a reigning champion with depth, youth and new recruits in Oscar Allen, Sam Draper and Daniel Annable adding further options. Questions around Lachie Neale's personal circumstances have been raised, but the Lions demonstrated in the back half of 2025 that they could perform without him.
The Gold Coast Suns, under Damien Hardwick, are a more serious proposition than many southern commentators have been willing to concede. A midfield built around Matt Rowell, Noah Anderson, Touk Miller and now Christian Petracca gives the Suns a genuine engine room. When Rowell returns to full fitness after the opening rounds, the Suns' midfield may well be the strongest in the competition. An all-Queensland grand final, a thought that would have attracted polite laughter two years ago, is now a plausible scenario.
Sydney are expected to rebound in Dean Cox's second season. The arrival of Charlie Curnow addresses a key forward absence that has hampered the Swans since Lance Franklin's final year. With Tom Papley and Callum Mills returning from injury, Cox effectively has the equivalent of multiple new recruits without having paid trade currency for them.
Fremantle have assembled a core of players entering their prime, with Caleb Serong, Hayden Young and Andrew Brayshaw among the most exciting midfielders in the game. Adelaide remain a finals side despite their post-season collapse in 2025. GWS have quality but have been hurt by pre-season injuries, most seriously Tom Green's knee and Sam Taylor's hamstring. Port Adelaide are rebuilding under a new coach. West Coast remain the competition's most patient reconstruction project.
The broader picture is clear enough. Travel and fatigue advantages have long favoured Victorian clubs, and those structural benefits have not disappeared. A Victorian team winning the 2026 premiership cannot be ruled out in a competition where injuries and small margins shape outcomes as much as list quality does. But the weight of evidence points to a competition that is more geographically balanced than at any point since the early 2000s. The academies that Victorian clubs once derided have become the north's most powerful recruiting tool, and the talent pipeline now flows with increasing force toward Brisbane, the Gold Coast and, to a degree, Sydney. For the AFL as a national competition, that is arguably a healthy development. For Victorian supporters, it is simply a new and unfamiliar reality.