The Bench Boost chip has been a part of FPL for quite a while, being one of the selection of chips at your disposal that can help you gain a lot of ground at any point throughout the season. It’s also the namesake of this lovely website; its most noteworthy accolade.
This guide will include exactly what the bench boost chip is, how to use it, and the best strategies for using the chip during the FPL season.
What is the Bench Boost Chip?
The Bench Boost chip, when played, gives you the ability to earn the points scored by the players on your bench for a single gameweek. Points scored by players on your bench regularly only count towards your total if one of your starting eleven hasn’t played that week.
This can always be a pain – having points left on your bench when they’ve outperformed a member of your starting eleven is always a huge “what if?”
Playing the Bench Boost chip ensures that you’ll gain all the points that each of your 15 players have scored that week.
Considering factors such as double gameweeks and weeks when your bench is rather strong, this can be a great way to pick up 15+ extra points in a gameweek.
When Can You Play the Bench Boost Chip?
Similar to the Free Hit chip, we’ve historically been given 1 bench boost to play during the season. As of 25/26, we now get 2 of these to play each season – once in the first half of the season (GW19 and earlier), and one in the second half (GW20 onwards).
This hugely changes how we use our chips, as they’ve historically been saved up for the second half of the season due to double gameweeks. Now, we don’t really see these in the first half of the season, so teams will need to be built differently.
When Should I Play My Bench Boost?
This is the core part of this guide, considering that in terms of activating the chip… you just press the button. There is one core time to play your Bench Boost – when you have an extremely strong bench. This can come during a regular ol’ gameweek, but there is a primary tactic when it comes to using this chip.
Exceptional Single Gameweeks / First Half of the Season
Considering the fact that we now have a Bench Boost chip in each half of the season, and we don’t see double gameweeks/blanks at that point, there’s more of a focus on building a solid bench and popping the bench boost in a regular gameweek.
Generally, we’d want our bench to have 4 solid options who are relatively cheap, and are very likely to start each week. You don’t want to be in a situation where you’ve popped the chip and your benched players don’t actually play.
This would also line up with those players, most of them at least, having good fixtures.
These cheaper players are usually enablers – cheap players who start most weeks, and have some avenues for points. Examples from the 25/26 season would include 4-4.5m defenders (Rodon, Van de Ven, Richards), 4.0 keepers (e.g. Dubravka), 4.5-5m midfielders (e.g. Stach, Dewsbury-Hall, Xhaka), and <6m forwards (Calvert-Lewin, Kroupi Jr, etc.)
Players who start for their respective sides, and are cheap enough to ride the bench for the surrounding gameweeks.
Double Gameweeks
As highlighted in the general guide to FPL, double gameweeks are a hugely important part of FPL. These are where, due to fixtures being rearranged, teams will end up with two fixtures in a single gameweek. What happens, generally once a season, is a big double gameweek, where a number of teams have multiple fixtures.
This is usually where people will play one of their chips. With the Bench boost chip, you can build a team that has a bench full of players who have a double gameweek, while popping the Bench boost that week. Having the points of players from 8 matches sounds pretty handy, doesn’t it?
Building for this usually involves Wildcarding just before the double gameweek and playing either the Bench Boost or the Triple Captain chip during the DGW. This is most common towards the end of the season, where we’ve traditionally had the bigger sets of doubles.
It’s also simply possible to build your team over the prior weeks to include the players you want to include in your Bench Boost. That can be an issue when it comes to having, well, a very strong bench; causing headaches when choosing your starting eleven.
This also ties into having these players after the DGW. Ideally, these players should be great options that are guaranteed a healthy number of minutes throughout the double, though without there being too much value tied into your bench.
A key way of planning out any double gameweek strategy is to follow Ben Crellin on Twitter. He’s canonically the guy for this stuff.