The 2020 Australian Football League season is the ongoing 124th season of the elite Australian rules football competition and the 31st under the name "Australian Football League", having changed from "Victorian Football League" after the 1989 season. There will be 18 teams competing in the league, the same as the previous eight seasons.

On 22 March 2020, the season was suspended at the conclusion of round 1 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.^[1] The season resumed on 11 June 2020, and if there are no further disruptions would conclude with a Grand Final in late October.

The 2020 season was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which was formally declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization on 11 March 2020, eight days prior to the scheduled start of the premiership season. Restrictions imposed by the different state governments related to social distancing, lockdowns of non-essential services which lasted for three months across the country, and border controls for interstate and international travel, all had significant effects on the completion of the 2020 season.

Prior to the commencement of the season, anticipating that the season would be forced to cease at the peak of the virus, the AFL announced the fixture would be shortened from 22 matches per team to 17, with each team playing each other once.^[2] The season then commenced on 19 March as originally scheduled; but as restrictions, followed for periods of formal quarantine, were introduced on interstate travel, the season was suspended after round one.^[3]

The season was suspended for more than two months. On 15 May, as most states began easing restrictions, the league's plan to resume the season was announced: clubs began non-contact training from 18 May, and full contact training from 25 May, ahead of resuming competitive matches from 11 June,^[4] with the revised fixture released gradually throughout the year, and changing regularly and often at short notice when the situation forced it.

The first major fixturing challenge occurred in the aftermath of Round 4, when a spike in Victorian COVID-19 cases prompted other states to either impose tighter quarantine restrictions on Victorians, or defer the relaxation of restrictions already in place. Although this forced two planned Round 5 matches (Richmond vs West Coast and Melbourne vs Sydney) to be redrawn at less than a week's notice (Richmond instead faced Melbourne in Victoria, and Sydney faced West Coast in Queensland), and the entire planned Round 6 and 7 fixtures to be redrawn, the season continued without suspension.

As of Round 10, the only other fixture which has not gone ahead as scheduled was:

• In Round 3, the match between Essendon and Melbourne was postponed at 24 hours notice after Conor McKenna (Essendon) returned a positive for the virus in a pre-match test.^[5] It will be played later in the season.

When games were postponed or rescheduled, other games within the same round were often also rescheduled to ensure the primetime television slots were filled.

During the peak of the hiatus, players were allowed to train only within the strict limits of the government restrictions on public gatherings; at the height of the pandemic in April and May, when gatherings larger than two were restricted, this means players could train only in pairs. Sixteen Adelaide players, as well as assistant coach Ben Hart, were sanctioned for inadvertently breaching these guidelines when training too close to each other on a quarantine camp in early May; Hart was suspended for six weeks and the players each received a suspended sentence of one week.^[6]

When the league returned to training and playing, it was done with strict, enforceable protocols and monitoring in place to ensure that the clubs would not suffer a virus outbreak, and that any virus cases could be contained with minimal impact to the wider competition.^[4] To this effect, players, umpires and staff were regularly tested for the virus and continued to train mostly in small groups, allowing individual players or small groups to be segregated and contained in the event of positive cases. Players and club personnel were also subject to protocols which extended to players' personal lives, which were above and beyond the lockdown guidelines still in place for the general public; several clubs and players received suspensions for transgressions such as attending non-essential gatherings or riding in Ubers during the season.^[7]

Throughout the season, AFL-listed players were not permitted to participate in the state league competitions (the VFL, SANFL, WAFL or NEAFL) due to the greater risk of external threats in the semi-professional state league environment; this meant there was no formal competitive reserves football for players who were not selected in the seniors.^[8] Clubs based in the same state were permitted to arrange ad hoc scratch matches for their unselected players against each other and in empty stadiums to enable some match practice; these could be stand alone games or curtain raisers to senior games.^[9]

Interstate travel restrictions and quarantine periods were a significant impediment to the completion of the season. When the season resumed, the South Australian and Western Australian governments still had in place strict 14-day quarantine periods for interstate travellers which were not waived for football clubs; Western Australian restrictions remained in place throughout the season. By Round 5, increasing virus cases in Victoria had resutled in a 14-day quarantine was imposed for travel from Victoria throughout the other states;^[10] and, by Round 10, travel out of New South Wales was also restricted.^[11]

To overcome this, the season required several clubs to relocate outside their states, primarily to Queensland. The fixture featured several quarantine hubs, in which clubs travelled at the same time to a restricted state for an extended three- or four-week trip, quarantined there and played several games against other teams in the hub. Players' immediate families were permitted to join them at the league's expense, but were subject to the same restrictions and virus testing regime.^[4][12]

Hubs and relocations established during the season were:

• Rounds 2–6: West Coast and Fremantle (from Round 2) and Adelaide and Port Adelaide (from Round 3) all hubbed in south-east Queensland, playing home games at Metricon Stadium and the Gabba.^[4] All clubs except Port Adelaide left the Gold Coast hub at the conclusion of Round 6.
• From Round 6: All ten Victorian teams relocated outside Victoria. Carlton, Western Bulldogs, North Melbourne, St Kilda, Richmond and Essendon were based in south-east Queensland; and Collingwood, Hawthorn, Geelong and Melbourne were initially based in New South Wales,^[13] before further border restrictions saw them move to Queensland from Round 9.^[14] The clubs were able to travel to South Australia, Western Australia and Northern Territory from their hub states.
• Rounds 7–9: Collingwood and Geelong hubbed for three rounds in Perth, playing each other and the two Perth teams.
• Rounds 9–12: Hawthorn and Carlton hubbed for four rounds in Perth, playing each other, the two Perth teams, and serving a bye.
• From Round 10: the two New South Wales teams, Greater Western Sydney and Sydney, relocated to south-east Queensland.^[11]

The hubbing arrangement resulted in many fixturing anomalies. Among the most notable occurred in Round 6, when all nine games were played in New South Wales and Queensland, traditionally rugby league territory. Whole rounds were played with no matches in Melbourne, which had only previously occurred in Round 8, 1952 (the promotional National Day Round). Clubs hosted several fixtured home games at interstate venues, and hub stadiums were sometimes used for multiple games on the same day – the first double-headers in senior VFL/AFL football since round 19, 1986. The desire to compress the schedule meant that the seven-game Round 10 was played entirely on weekdays, the first time this had happened outside of rounds played on a public holiday.

Government restrictions on gatherings meant that, starting in Round 1, crowds were locked out of senior VFL/AFL matches for the first time in the code's history.^[15] State governments gradually allowed crowds, often small and restricted in size, into games, starting immediately from the resumption in Round 2 in South Australia and New South Wales, from Round 3 in Queensland, and from football's resumption in Round 7 in Western Australia.^[16] The sizes of allowable crowds changed as the season progressed, with early season Queensland and New South Wales crowds limited to only a few hundred, while half crowds were allowed in the largely virus-free Western Australia from Round 7.

Starting in Round 2 after the resumption of the season, broadcasters experimented with adding artificial crowd audio to lend a more normal feel to their telecasts to overcome the lack of genuine crowds in stadiums.^[17]

Throughout the season, matches were played for a shortened length of 16 minutes plus time on per quarter, instead of 20 minutes plus time on. This was originally done at the start of the season, in the hope that playing shorter games could facilitate more frequent games than weekly, maximising the games which could be played before the anticipated suspension of the season;^[18] but this did not eventuate, since the season was suspended after only one round. It was then retained after the resumption to lighten the load on players to take account for the compromised training schedule; and, to allow make-up games to be more easily scheduled between rounds when matches were postponed or refixtured.^[19] As a direct result of this, it was a very low-scoring season, and several records or long-standing marks in low scoring were set during the season.

When the season was suspended, the league and clubs were faced with an acute cash flow shortage, as the gate and broadcast revenues which had been budgeted for stopped immediately;^[20] clubs deriving revenues from gaming and other public venues also saw those revenues drop when public gatherings were restricted.^[21] The league and clubs all stood down or severely reduced hours for huge percentages of their staff during the suspension; and the AFL agreed with both the AFLPA and ALFUA to significant play cuts for the players and umpires for the season, amounting to 50% of their wage from the point of the suspension until the end of the season, and increasing to 70% for any period of suspension which extends beyond the end of May.^[22][23] The league successfully obtained a $500–600m line of credit with the National Australia Bank and ANZ Bank, leveraged against its ownership of Marvel Stadium, to cover its and its clubs' cash shortfalls during the suspension.^[24]

Resuming the season and playing the shortened 17-game season in full, even without crowds, was important to ensure the league still took in most of its television revenue. Prior to the resumption, the league renegotiated its $417m/yr broadcast deals with Network Seven and Foxtel, ultimately resulting in a total television revenue reduction of approximately $150m over 2020–2022.^[25]

Among the other direct impacts of the pandemic were:

• The Dreamtime at the 'G match between Richmond and Essendon was not played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground per its name, but instead at TIO Stadium in Darwin.
• St Kilda and Port Adelaide did not play a match at Jiangwan Stadium in Shanghai, China, as scheduled as part of the original Round 11 – this decision being made while the virus was still mostly prevalent within China and prior to its spread in Australia,^[26][27][28] but would eventually have been mandated by restrictions on international travel.
• The two-test international rules football series against Ireland, planned to have been played in Ireland in November, was cancelled.^[29]

The pre-season series of games returned as the 2020 Marsh Community Series, with teams playing two games each. The games were stand-alone, with no overall winner of the series. Each team played two games, many at suburban or regional venues, while all games were televised on Fox Footy.^[30]

A one-off benefit match was played on 28 February 2020, as a fundraiser for the relief effort for the 2019–20 Australian bushfire season.^[31] The league donated $2.5 million to disaster relief funds in association with the match.^[32] Selection for the two teams was under state of origin rules, and it was the first interstate representative match featuring AFL-listed players since the AFL Hall of Fame Tribute Match held in 2008.

Map of the grounds to be used during the 2019 AFL season (excluding Jiangwan Stadium, Shanghai)

As the coronavirus situation developed, only the first round was played as originally drawn. The rest of the fixture was redrawn into a new seventeen-round season in which each team plays each other once.^[33][34] The new rescheduled fixture was released gradually through the season, often at short notice, to allow the fixture to respond to developments in the spread of the virus.^[35]

Bold – Home game
X – Bye
Opponent for round listed above margin

• Numbers highlighted in green indicates the team finished the round inside the top 8.
• Numbers highlighted in blue indicates the team finished in first place on the ladder in that round.
• Numbers highlighted in red indicates the team finished in last place on the ladder in that round.
• Underlined numbers indicates the team did not play during that round, either due to a bye or a postponed game.
• Subscript numbers indicate ladder position at round's end.