The Premier League will publish the full judgements of its Key Match Incidents (KMI) Panel on referee and video assistant referee decisions for the first time this season, in a move designed to improve transparency.
The five-member panel has assessed major incidents since it was established in the 2022-23 season, but its complete findings have previously been kept private. Clubs have, however, sometimes leaked the information.
The new policy is one of three measures being introduced by the Premier League. The others are the publication of direct explanations from match officials and the increased use of RefCam, including audio of referees speaking to players.
Every major incident is reviewed and voted on by the KMI Panel, with its feedback currently provided to clubs and officials. The Premier League believes making the full document public will offer supporters a clearer picture of how decisions are judged.
Selected direct comments from referees and VAR officials will also be published on the Premier League’s Match Centre account on X, as well as on the league’s website and app.
Previously, the Match Centre account generally offered a summary of an incident rather than the officials’ real-time explanations and thought processes. The new information will include a referee’s explanation of why a decision was made, or the VAR’s reasoning for not recommending an intervention.
The wider use of RefCam will also allow broadcast audio of conversations between referees and players for the first time. The footage will not be shown live and will not include discussions between the referee and VAR. It will be used once or twice during each round of fixtures.
The Premier League and Pro Ref are seeking to improve the public’s understanding of officiating while remaining restricted by the International Football Association Board’s (IFAB) refusal to permit live broadcasts of VAR discussions.
The Premier League will continue talks with IFAB about allowing more VAR communication to be shared with supporters.
How the KMI Panel operates
The KMI Panel meets every week to examine decisions involving goals, penalties, red cards and other major incidents.
It consists of three former players or coaches, alongside one representative from the Premier League and one from the referees’ body Pro Ref.
Premier League clubs created the panel in 2022 to remove the responsibility for performance statistics from the refereeing organisation.
The panel does not assess incidents simply from the perspective of a supporter or manager. Its members consider the Laws of the Game and, importantly, the standard by which the Premier League expects matches to be officiated. That helps explain why the number of errors identified by the panel is lower than the total supporters might expect.
The on-field referee team’s decision is examined first, followed by the VAR’s involvement. Because VAR can only intervene when there is a “clear and obvious” error, the panel can conclude that an on-field decision was wrong while the VAR was correct not to act.
It also reviews incidents that cannot be checked by VAR, including missed second-yellow-card offences.
A simple majority of the five members is needed to decide whether an incident was handled correctly.
Judgements from the 2025-26 season, seen by BBC Sport, recorded 25 VAR errors. That was an increase from 18 in 2024-25, but remained below the totals of 31 in 2023-24 and 38 in 2022-23.
The published findings also include comments from panel members explaining the reasoning behind each outcome. Those assessments are used to help determine performance-related payments for referees at the end of each season.
