Ligue 1 relegation 2026: Marseille and Le Havre have no survival number, safety line is 91 points

Marseille and Le Havre are the only two clubs in Ligue 1 that cannot guarantee survival with their own results, and the reason is arithmetic rather than form. Marseille have three points and Le Havre have two. With 29 matches left, neither can add more than 87. That caps them at 90 and 89. The worst-case safety line in this division is 91.

All figures are as of the September 21 update, with 45 of the season's 306 matches played. The fifth round is complete, so every club has five behind it and 29 in front, and 261 matches are still to come. Ligue 1 ranks on points, three for a win and one for a draw, so everything below is counted in points rather than wins.

The safety line is 91 points, and a club's survival number is 91 minus what it already has. That is the whole calculation. Monaco, on 13 points from four wins and a draw, need 78 of the 87 still available, the lowest number in the division and nine points of slack across the entire rest of the season. Lyon and Paris FC, both on 11, need 80. Lille and Rennes need 81, Paris Saint-Germain 83, Angers and Strasbourg 84, Le Mans and Auxerre 85, and Brest, Lorient, Toulouse and Nice 86. Lens and Troyes, both on four points, need 87, which is every point left on their schedule. The numbers run from 78 up to 87, a spread of nine, exactly the points gap between Monaco and Lens.

Read those as margins and the bottom of the table has almost none. Lens and Troyes can drop nothing at all. Brest, Lorient, Toulouse and Nice can drop one point, which in a points table is the same as dropping none, because the cheapest way to lose any is a draw and a draw costs two. Twenty-eight wins and a draw in 29 matches comes to 85, and their number is 86. So six clubs would have to win every remaining match to put survival beyond the reach of anyone else's results. Le Mans and Auxerre can afford exactly one draw and nothing more. This is not a forecast that any of them are going down. It marks the point at which a club stops having to check another score, and after five matches that point sits near the ceiling for most of the division.

Order the bottom by goals instead of points and it rearranges itself. Troyes have the worst goal difference in Ligue 1 at four scored and eleven conceded, minus seven, and they sit 16th. Auxerre are next at minus five, seven scored and twelve conceded, and they sit 10th on six points. Nice are minus three with three goals in five matches, and they are 14th. Le Havre are minus three as well, four scored and seven conceded, beaten 3-2 at Toulouse on Sunday. Marseille, second from bottom, are only minus one, seven scored and eight conceded, and lost 2-1 at home to Paris Saint-Germain on Monday. None of this enters a single figure on this site, which counts points and nothing else. It is worth saying out loud anyway, because the two clubs with the worst goal records are 16th and 10th rather than 17th and 18th.

Two clubs carry a relegation tragic number and sixteen do not. Marseille's is 29 and Le Havre's is 29, and in both cases that is every match they have left. The sixteen blanks are the more useful half of that column. A blank does not mean a club is safe. It means no run of that club's own defeats, not even losing all 29, would make the drop certain by itself, because only two clubs go down and the clubs above would have to fail as well. Troyes could lose every remaining match and still not be mathematically relegated on their own results. The two figures that do exist say the same thing from the other side. Marseille and Le Havre would have to lose all 29 before the drop became certain, which is the latest a tragic number can possibly fall.

The reachable ranks carry that point across the whole table. All 18 clubs can still finish first and all 18 can still finish 18th. Monaco lead by two points and their reachable range is 1st to 18th, the same range as Le Havre's. That is not a quirk of the bottom of the table. After five matches of 34, the 87 points still available cover the 11-point spread between top and bottom several times over. Nobody is safe yet and nobody is out of anything yet, and both halves of that sentence come out of the same arithmetic.

The table now stands still until October 10, when Lens host Lyon. Lens carry the survival number with no slack in it, and the arithmetic of that match is simple. A win leaves them on seven points with 28 matches and a ceiling of exactly 91. A draw leaves a ceiling of 89 and a defeat leaves 88. On October 11 Lille host Le Havre, and only a Le Havre win holds their ceiling at 89, with a draw dropping it to 87 and a defeat to 86. A ceiling never rises, so Le Havre's survival number can appear only if the 91-point line comes down to meet it, and that takes other clubs dropping points. The same day Nice host Strasbourg, Monaco host Toulouse, Paris Saint-Germain host Le Mans, Brest host Angers and Lorient host Paris FC. On October 12 Rennes host Auxerre, one of the two clubs that can afford exactly one draw, and Troyes host Marseille, the worst goal difference in the division against the club that cannot reach the line at all. The dates are Korean time; in France the nine matches run from Friday 9 to Sunday 11 October, with both October 12 matches on the Sunday. The full fixture list is at.

Correction, October 6: An earlier version listed eight of the nine fixtures between October 10 and 12 and left out Rennes against Auxerre, on October 12 Korean time (Sunday 11 October in France). The paragraph above now includes it. No result there moves the 91-point safety line or gives Marseille or Le Havre a survival number, and none of the clinch or tragic numbers changed.

How to read these numbers. A clinch number, or magic number, is the minimum further points that guarantee an outcome even if every rival wins everything still on its schedule. A tragic number is the further defeats after which an outcome becomes impossible even if the club wins everything else. A blank in either column means no run of that club's own results settles the question by itself. Rank ranges are the highest and lowest finish still arithmetically reachable. Ties never settle a question on their own, in either direction: a rival who can only draw level still counts as a threat to a clinch, and a rival who only draws level cannot eliminate anyone. That caution is deliberate, and it means a clinch here can trail the official announcement by a day. Goal difference, head-to-head records and the official tiebreakers are not used. The live table with every club's survival and relegation figures is at, the remaining fixtures at, the European qualification and relegation rules at, and the calculation itself at. Every club's magic number is listed at, and plays the rest of the season out result by result. Marseille have their own page at, Le Havre at, Troyes at and Lens at.