Handball in 2026/27: Four Claimed Changes, None of Them in the Laws
Four handball changes are being reported for 2026/27: that an arm above shoulder height is automatically unnatural, that there is a new distinction between goals scored directly and indirectly from a hand, that referees have been given wider discretion, and that the VAR threshold for handball has moved. None of the four is in the Laws of the Game. The 2026/27 edition lists its own changes, and that list contains no amendment to the handball offences.
Three handball offences, one boundary on the body at the bottom of the armpit, and one test for an unnaturally bigger body.
The same three offences, the same boundary and the same test. The 2026/27 edition amends none of it.
What is being claimed, and what the Laws say
An arm above shoulder height is now automatically an unnatural position, so any contact there is handball.
The Laws draw one line on the body for handball and it is the armpit, not the shoulder: for the purposes of determining handball offences, the upper boundary of the arm is in line with the bottom of the armpit. That line marks where the arm starts. It is not a height above which contact becomes an offence. What decides the offence is whether the position of the hand or arm is a consequence of, or justifiable by, the player's body movement for that specific situation, which is a question about the movement the player was actually making. An arm above the head in a defensive wall is hard to justify by the jump itself and is usually penalised, but it is penalised by that test rather than by its height. The word "shoulder" appears once in the entire 2026/27 edition, in the Glossary's definition of charging an opponent.
2026/27 introduces a new distinction between a goal scored directly from the hand and a goal scored indirectly after it.
Law 12 makes it an offence to score in the opponents' goal directly from the hand or arm, even if accidental and including by the goalkeeper, or immediately after the ball has touched the hand or arm, even if accidental. Both bullets are in the 2026/27 edition and neither is in its list of changes, whose own preamble says it contains the changes to the Laws of the Game for the 2026/27 edition. What the two bullets actually distinguish is the timing of the scorer's own touch, and both of them name the scorer. A team-mate's accidental touch earlier in the move is outside both, which is the part most often reported the other way round.
Referees have been given expanded discretion over handball for 2026/27.
The handball text carries no 2026/27 amendment. The edition's outline of Law 12 changes has two entries and both are about denying an obvious goal-scoring opportunity: no caution where advantage is played and a goal is scored, and the addition of attackers to the list of DOGSO considerations. Neither touches handball. And the provision itself does not hand the referee an open judgement, it names what to look at: whether the arm position is a consequence of, or justifiable by, the player's body movement for that specific situation, with the Law adding that a player who puts the arm there takes the risk of it being hit and penalised. Deliberate handling is a separate offence with its own wording, of which moving the hand or arm towards the ball is the Law's example.
The VAR threshold for reviewing a handball has changed for 2026/27.
The threshold is a clear and obvious error or a serious missed incident, and the 2026/27 edition prints it unchanged everywhere it prints it. Handball is named inside the categories that were already reviewable: an attacking team offence in the build-up to or scoring of a goal, and an attacking team offence in the build-up to a penalty incident, both of which list handball by name. The edition does add to what VAR may review, and the three additions are a red card resulting from a clearly incorrect second caution, a card shown to the wrong player, and, as a competition option, a wrongly awarded corner kick. None of the three is about handball.
What changed
Nothing in the handball offences. The three offences are the same three, the test for an unnaturally bigger body is the same test, and the only boundary the Laws draw on the body for handball is still the bottom of the armpit. The one place the 2026/27 edition touches the handling text at all is a caution: the list of cautionable unsporting behaviour now reads "handles the ball in an attempt to score a goal (whether or not the attempt is successful)", and the words that used to follow it, covering a handball that unsuccessfully tried to prevent a goal, are gone. That is the consequence of a change to advantage rather than a change to handball. If the referee plays advantage for an offence that denied an obvious goal-scoring opportunity and the non-offending team scores as a result, there is no disciplinary sanction at all, so a defender who handles, fails to stop the ball and watches the goal go in is no longer cautioned for it. The edition's outline of what changed in Law 12 has exactly two entries and both of them are about denying an obvious goal-scoring opportunity.
Why it matters
A handball decision is the one a crowd argues about most, and the four claims each make the argument worse in a specific way. "Above shoulder height is automatic" replaces the test the Laws actually set, which asks about the player's own movement, with a height that appears nowhere in the document: the word "shoulder" is printed once in the whole 2026/27 edition, in the Glossary's definition of a charge. "A new direct and indirect rule" describes something the Laws have said for years and did not change this season, and it is usually stated in a way that gets the real distinction wrong: the two bullets are about the scorer's own hand or arm, not a team-mate's earlier in the move. "Wider discretion" invites a referee to be asked for a judgement the Law does not leave open. And "the VAR threshold has moved" is a claim about a threshold that is still a clear and obvious error or a serious missed incident, unamended, with handball named where it always was, inside the goal and penalty categories. Every sentence of this page links the provision it rests on, so none of it has to be taken on trust.
Scenarios
Ball strikes a defender's raised arm in the wall
A free kick strikes the arm of a player in the wall who has jumped with the arm above his head, well above shoulder height.
Goal scored after a team-mate's accidental touch
A midfielder's arm is accidentally struck by the ball in his own half. Play continues for several passes and a team-mate scores.