Where AI thinks QPR and Charlton Athletic will finish in 26/27 Championship table | OneFootball

QPR and Charlton had underwhelming seasons in the Championship in 2025-26, and here's where AI thinks they'll end up at the end of next season.

Two of London's clubs had uninspiring seasons in the 2025-26 Championship, so here's how AI thinks that Charlton Athletic and Queens Park Rangers will fare in 2026-27.

Of the three London clubs in the Championship throughout the 2025-26 season, Millwall had by far and away the best season, finishing in third place in the table before losing to Hull City in the semi-finals of the play-offs.

But for the other two, it was a somewhat underwhelming season. Charlton Athletic and Queens Park Rangers went into 2025-26 from very different perspectives. Charlton were spending their first season back after five years away, while for QPR it was an eleventh consecutive season at this level.

Both clubs had seasons which ended with their respective teams just about reaching their minimum expectation levels. As a newly-promoted club, Charlton's first aim was to avoid getting relegated straight back, and they achieved this, finishing 19th in the table and six points above the relegation places.

As a more established Championship club, Queens Park Rangers hoped for a tilt at a play-off place last season, but their minimum expectation would have been to not get dragged into a fight to avoid relegation. They achieved this, finishing in 15th place and eleven points above the bottom three.

But 2025-26 is now completed, and all clubs are already turning their attention to the new season. With this in mind, Football League World have asked AI to predict where these two clubs will finish the 2026-27 season, and here's what it told us.

Charlton Athletic - 15th

AI predicts a modest improvement for Charlton Athletic, with the team anticipated to finish in 15th place in the Championship. It considers the club's current position to have been determined by having been newly promoted at the end of 2025: "That usually sets the “true level” for year one", it explains, "good enough to stay up, not yet ready to push into the top half."

The key reason that it gives for this is what it describes as a "recognisable spine" to the team. Players such as goalkeeper Thomas Kaminski, Amari'i Bell, Sonny Carey and Charlie Kelman are considered to give manager Nathan Jones a skeleton upon which he can build, while Jones himself is described as a "stable manager."

This sort of incremental progress is considered typical for a team spending their second season at this level, with "familiarity with the level, better recruitment, and a clearer tactical identity" given as key reasons for fans to expect a modest improvement on 2025-26 "unless a couple of players explode."

With the summer transfer market yet to come, there are likely to be changes in playing personnel at The Valley, and AI suggests that the club need "2-3 smart signings" in order to improve substantially upon last season's final position.

The good news for Charlton on that front is that if the middle order of the Championship is as congested again in 2026-27 as it was in 2025-26 - just ten points separated Norwich City in ninth from Stoke City in 17th - progress up the table can come more easily if the team can break clear of that scrap to avoid the drop. In jumping from 21st to sixth and then on into the Premier League in just one season, Hull City offered an example of how quickly a team's fortunes can change.

Queens Park Rangers - 13th

Queens Park Rangers will go into the 2026-27 season from a very different perspective to that of Charlton Athletic, having now been unbroken members of the Championship for eleven years.

AI predicts offers a similar modest improvement for Rangers next season, bumping them up to 13th in the table. The presence of such players as Ronnie Edwards, Jimmy Dunne, Esquerdinha, Koki Saito, Ilias Chair and Nicolas Madsen is considered to be proof of a core of "players with above‑average Championship ceilings" who can help them to a comfortable mid-table finish again, next season.

The QPR first-team squad at the end of the 2025-26 season is described as "young and improving, but not elite", and Rangers did have the third-youngest average squad in the division.

But concerns are also raised. The defence is highlighted as a potential issue, and the 73 goals that they conceded was the second-highest total in the division, with only bottom of the table Sheffield Wednesday having conceded more.

And the AI criticism that the squad has "no obvious 15–20 goal striker" is borne out by the fact that, although they ended 2025-26 having scored a fairly healthy 61 goals, only Richard Kone and Rumarn Burrell finished last season in double-figures, with those two players scoring 10 League goals each.

It's a positive that Rangers can call upon players from all over the pitch to score goals - they had 17 different goalscorers in the League in 2025-26 - but a player that could double that 10-goal top scorer total could be transformative for Julien Stephan's team next season.

All this leads AI to the conclusion that the Queens Park Rangers squad is one that "can climb a few places with natural development, but lacks the firepower or parachute‑money depth to jump into the top six." After 11 consecutive seasons at this level during which they've failed to reach the play-offs and have only broken into the top ten once, Rangers supporters will be hoping for better next season, but getting as a high as the top six will certainly be a challenge in a highly competitive division.