AFL 2026, Power Rankings after Round 7

Welcome back to the Power Rankings.

As the ladder takes shape, we finally have an idea of what it’ll take to crack the AFL’s first ever top 10. And some unlikely sides have a genuine path to a wildcard.

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See our ranking of every AFL club from best to worst after Round 7 below!

How do the Power Rankings work? We take wins and losses into account, but also the quality of opposition faced and whether teams are likely to get healthier and/or improve going forward. It’s a little bit ‘who’s hot and who’s not’; part predictive, part analysis of what’s happened. If Team A is above Team B, we’d probably tip A to win if they were playing at a neutral venue this weekend.

All times AEST.

1. HAWTHORN (6-1, 124.5%)

Last week: Ranked 1st, def Gold Coast by 49 pts

This week: Collingwood at the MCG, Thursday 7:30pm

2. SYDNEY SWANS (6-1, 178.1%)

Last week: Ranked 2nd, def Western Bulldogs by 66 pts

This week: Melbourne at the SCG, Sunday 3:15pm

3. BRISBANE LIONS (4-3, 118.8%)

Last week: Ranked 3rd, def Adelaide by 52 pts

This week: Essendon at Marvel Stadium, Saturday 12:35pm

4. FREMANTLE (6-1, 137.6%)

Last week: Ranked 4th, def Carlton by 14 pts

This week: Western Bulldogs at Marvel Stadium, Friday 7:30pm

If you wanted to say these are the only four teams who can win the flag, we would not argue against you. We would instead say we have a broader view of who can be a flag contender in April.

The Hawks and Swans are the two most dominant teams of the season thus far, in terms of who they’ve beaten and how they’ve beaten them; the stats love Sydney but they’re still hard to read into with a relatively small sample size. We’re big believers in percentage, and the Swans have the fourth-highest after seven games in the AFL era, but purely looking at percentage doesn’t tell you they played West Coast on a bad day and half the Bulldogs’ best team.

The Dockers are doing a lot right but just don’t have the experience at the pointy end of the season. Admittedly, that sort of thing is often overrated given once you make the top four, you’re one win away from a prelim; but there are enough questions they cannot answer until September that we’ve still got Freo fourth. (Also they weren’t amazing against Carlton, and haven’t played any of our top-six teams since the Geelong loss in Round 1.)

And then there’s Brisbane, who followed up two wobbly weeks against the bottom six with their best performance of the year – they were in Grand Final form against Adelaide. That version of the Lions is the best team in the comp, period.

So yes, right now these four look like our four premiership contenders; but there is still so much time for Geelong, Gold Coast or Adelaide to get it together, or for the Bulldogs to get healthy.

5. GEELONG (4-3, 108.6%)

Last week: Ranked 5th, lost to Port Adelaide by 30 pts

Yes, they’re still fifth despite an utterly bizarre loss to Port Adelaide. Who else would you put fifth though? The Bulldogs, Suns and Crows all lost, and the Pies only beat Essendon, so we’re respecting the Cats enough to say Saturday night was a one-off rather than the start of a worrying trend. (Although we do feel a little bit redeemed for our recent pessimism.) While their reputation is that of an experienced team that always wins this type of game, history says that’s not the case – they always have one or two absolute stinkers. Usually those come against St Kilda at Marvel, or Carlton at the MCG. So we can afford to wait, given how good they’ve otherwise been since Round 1, rather than jumping to conclusions. Fittingly they get North Melbourne next, a team they’ve beaten roughly 29385483 times in a row… if the Cats lose on Saturday, we can panic.

This week: North Melbourne at GMHBA Stadium, Saturday 4:35pm

6. WESTERN BULLDOGS (4-3, 91.8%)

Last week: Ranked 6th, lost to Sydney by 66 pts

Fair to suggest in their current form the Bulldogs aren’t the sixth-best team in the AFL, but this is why the rankings are complex – they’re not purely about current form (otherwise Melbourne and North Melbourne would be up way higher… you can look at the ladder if you want to see that). When healthy we still believe the Bulldogs are around this level, a top-four contender but a flawed one; and their 4-0 start has afforded them the ability to fall off over the last few weeks but still remain in the hunt. The last few games are almost irrelevant to our view of the team. Not completely irrelevant, though, because declines for the likes of Buku Khamis and Joel Freijah are concerning. This patch of games against the Hawks, Cats, Swans and Dockers was always going to be difficult and even if the Dogs were healthy it wouldn’t have been absurd if they had gone 0-4 – so it’s not like they’re dropping points they absolutely should’ve been winning. They’re just dropping massive amounts of percentage instead…

This week: Fremantle at Marvel Stadium, Friday 7:30pm

7. GOLD COAST SUNS (4-3, 114.4%)

Last week: Ranked 7th, lost to Hawthorn by 49 pts

The margin was slightly unfair on the Suns – they had a lot of misses which aren’t visible in the 9.9 to 16.6 scoreline – and so if you take it as a five or six-goal loss, that sounds about right to us given the Hawks’ home ground advantage down in Tassie. Damien Hardwick’s men are just a few steps behind the best right now, though we can’t figure out exactly why, other than the overall midfield declines which have been spoken about over the past few weeks. They’re still in a solid position thanks to their fast start to the year, but their next four games are in that dangerous zone where they should be favoured in all of them… but all are droppable (Giants at home, Saints in Darwin, Power in Darwin, Roos at Marvel). Their post-bye draw is actually pretty brutal so if they’re worse than 7-4 at Round 12, they’re in some trouble.

This week: GWS at People First Stadium, Sunday 7:20pm

8. COLLINGWOOD (4-3, 110.2%)

Last week: Ranked 9th, def Essendon by 77 pts

We have to remind ourselves it was only Essendon, but Anzac Day showcased the optimistic case around this year’s Magpies. An even league-average attack combined with elite defence could get Craig McRae’s men back to a prelim and from there, anything can happen. They scored two games’ worth of points against the Bombers, and it’s not like they won because their forward line was dominant; it may not mean a huge amount going forwards. But we needed to see it to believe it, and there it was. We suspect they will look a lot less dynamic against Hawthorn but their recent match-ups have been weird, so who knows…

This week: Hawthorn at the MCG, Thursday 7:30pm

9. ADELAIDE CROWS (3-4, 96.1%)

Last week: Ranked 8th, lost to Brisbane by 52 pts

All of those narrow losses to top-four contenders papered over the cracks a little bit – as we’ve said in this column before, they weren’t as close as the margins suggested. And in many respects Sunday’s loss to the Lions was more about the premiers hitting their stride, than about the Crows being particularly bad… but they weren’t great either. They’re not great at anything right now, really. Think of it this way; what would you say the Crows’ strength is right now? A defence that allowed St Kilda to score 102 points, and then allowed 32 scoring shots against Brisbane? That’s not a very strong strength. It’s only Round 7 but they’re three games and percentage back of the top three, which is a sizeable gap even in April, and with Port Adelaide rounding into some form suddenly the Showdown looks a hell of a lot scarier than anyone expected.

This week: Port Adelaide at Adelaide Oval, Friday 8:10pm

10. MELBOURNE (5-2, 102.8%)

Last week: Ranked 10th, def Richmond by 54 pts

If you’re annoyed at this ranking, Demons fans, just open a separate tab and look at the ladder again – where your boys are outright fourth. It’s pretty remarkable and now it’s time to take a more thorough look at their chances of playing finals. We reckon they need seven more wins, maybe eight if their percentage is going to be low. Having beaten Brisbane and Gold Coast you could fairly consider most games winnable, but realistically we’re looking at these ones – Eagles (Marvel), Giants (Alice Springs), Magpies (MCG), Bombers (MCG), Tigers (MCG), Kangaroos (Marvel) and Power (AO), plus throw in Freo at the MCG (hey, they won it last year!) and two games against the Dogs (which could be anything). As we saw in Gather Round, this team can also completely soil the bed, so they’ll probably lose a couple of those easier games listed above. But they can absolutely get to 12 wins from here. (They would likely need 14 or 15 to make the top six, which seems optimistic.)

This week: Sydney at the SCG, Sunday 3:15pm

11. ST KILDA (3-4, 110.1%)

Last week: Ranked 12th, def West Coast by 101 pts

As we said last week, “Ross Lyon gets a bit more combative than warranted during his press conferences, but he was totally right on Saturday night (against Adelaide) when he said ‘if you take out win-loss, we’ve improved’.” His Saints finally playing a bad team and finally winning well proved he was on the money. Being competitive without getting the results against like types is frustrating, and bad when it comes to the ladder, but did suggest a level of growth from last year’s side who won nine games but were a bit fortunate to do so. The Saints right now are a 12 or 13-win team, which is right around the mark you’ll need to make the wildcard round. That doesn’t guarantee they will win that many games, of course… but they are who we thought they were.

This week: Carlton at Marvel Stadium, Saturday 7:35pm

12. GWS GIANTS (3-4, 89.8%)

Last week: Ranked 11th, def North Melbourne by 7 pts

The eight-goal difference between the Giants’ win over North late last year, and the thriller on Sunday evening, says plenty. The Roos have closed the gap by improving but the Giants have clearly fallen backwards, too, and while their injury list isn’t great it’s no longer at excuse levels either. They are simply a very average team right now and very much at risk of losing their finals spot to a team like Melbourne or St Kilda, or even North Melbourne or Port Adelaide. The good news is their fixture is pretty gentle, as we suggested pre-season. The Giants are underdogs this week but they always beat the Suns, and they follow it with Essendon and West Coast – they should at least be 5-5. From there, they’ve still got winnable games against the Demons (Alice Springs), Saints (Marvel), Blues (home), Power (AO), Bombers again, Suns again and Eagles again. It is not the fixture a 2025 top-six team should have… which is handy, because they’re not a top-six quality team in 2026.

This week: Gold Coast at People First Stadium, Sunday 7:20pm

13. PORT ADELAIDE (3-4, 112.5%)

Last week: Ranked 14th, def Geelong by 30 pts

They won’t play at the level we’ve seen for the past two weeks for the rest of the season – almost beating one flag contender on the road, then thumping one at home. But the Power now look like what we expected coming into the year (not a wildcard team but definitely not bottom four); and in fact they might be better than that? They are doing a hell of a lot right, especially defensively, conceding the fewest inside 50s and the third-fewest points from turnover. Both stats are admittedly heavily impacted by their big wins over Essendon and Richmond but there is something going on here. With games left against the Blues (AO), Eagles (OS), Roos (AO), Saints (Marvel), Giants (AO), Demons (AO) and Bombers (AO) left, plus the injury-hit Bulldogs next week and the always-unpredictable Showdowns, there’s at least a chance they hit 12 wins and sneak into the wildcard.

This week: Adelaide at Adelaide Oval, Friday 8:10pm

14. NORTH MELBOURNE (4-3, 115.9%)

Last week: Ranked 13th, lost to GWS by 7 pts

Happy to admit we were wrong about the Kangaroos – they’re not contenders or anything, but they’re closer to the mid-table teams than they are to the bottom four. And despite a heartbreaking loss to the Giants they’re still in the wildcard mix thanks to their very kind draw. They haven’t beaten a good team yet but they may be able to make finals without doing so? They should still be favoured against the Eagles (away), Tigers and Bombers, and would consider games against the Power (away), Saints, Magpies, Demons and Suns all winnable too. History says you need a minimum of 11 wins to make the top 10, but because the bottom teams are particularly bad this year, there’ll be a few more points spread across the mid-table teams – so you probably need 12 wins and a good percentage to play finals. Even if North win six of those games we listed above, they would only need to pinch a couple of upsets elsewhere to sneak in. It’s feasible.

This week: Geelong at GMHBA Stadium, Saturday 4:35pm

15. CARLTON (1-6, 80.3%)

Last week: Ranked 15th, lost to Fremantle by 14 pts

…they’re gonna finish in the bottom four, aren’t they? We think the Blues are quite a bit better than the bottom three teams so it’ll be similar to when Adelaide finished 15th in 2024 (except we can’t see Carlton winning the minor premiership a year later). After all, getting within three goals of Freo on the road is pretty good! But we have to keep reminding ourselves that while on paper, their consistent competitive losses make them sound better than their win-loss record, this is who they’ve been for basically two seasons now. Theoretically the Blues should be an eight or nine-win team… but the theoretical Blues would’ve won a couple of flags this decade, based on how we collectively as the media have rated the list.

This week: St Kilda at Marvel Stadium, Saturday 7:35pm

16. ESSENDON (1-6, 72.9%)

Last week: Ranked 16th, lost to Collingwood by 77 pts

This week: Brisbane at Marvel Stadium, Saturday 12:35pm

17. WEST COAST EAGLES (2-5, 55.8%)

Last week: Ranked 17th, lost to St Kilda by 101 pts

This week: Richmond at Optus Stadium, Saturday 4:15pm

18. RICHMOND (0-7, 54.2%)

Last week: Ranked 18th, lost to Melbourne by 54 pts

This week: West Coast at Optus Stadium, Saturday 4:15pm

Fair enough if you want to group these three teams at the same level, because Essendon did allow Collingwood to kick a previously unthinkable score, and allow a senior citizen to rack up roughly 700 disposals.

But we think West Coast and Richmond are the clear bottom two at the moment, with the Eagles battling through a brutal month and the Tigers still trying to overcome the injuries that are hurting both this season and future ones (because they can’t get all their kids on the park).

The latter were solid on Friday night, hurt by the 50-50 umpiring calls all going against them, and then watching King of Junk Time Bayley Fritsch help the Demons kick away in the last.

But what on earth was going on there with West Coast? It’s hard to call a 101-point loss sneaky bad – and we’re all humans here, we can understand not giving 100 per cent when it’s futile – but how are you allowing a Ross Lyon team to kick 15 goals in a half?! They are still very young but they should be past these types of games where they just hit the showers early.

Good time for the Eagles to host the Tigers, then. It’s not quite a wooden spoon decider, but it will be very hard for West Coast to finish last if they get the job done.