Birmingham City will kick off their first season in England’s third tier for 29 years at home to Reading, while Wrexham host Wycombe Wanderers as the Welsh club make their return to League One.
Huddersfield Town and Rotherham United, the two teams who were relegated from the Championship along with Birmingham, will kick off their campaigns on Saturday 10 August, visiting Peterborough United and Exeter City respectively at 5.30pm BST.
League Two title winners Stockport County host Cambridge United on the opening day, while Mansfield Town, who were automatically promoted along with the Hatters and Wrexham, open their new League One season at Barnsley on Friday 9 August.
Crawley Town, who secured promotion by beating Crewe Alexandra in the League Two play-off final in May, will face Blackpool in one of 11 third-tier matches, kicking off at 5.30pm BST on the first Saturday.
Matches from the three divisions of the English football league will alternate on the day, with Championship matches kicking off earlier at 12:30 BST and League Two matches starting in their traditional 15:00 BST slot.
The first midweek league match of the season will take place in seven weeks’ time on Tuesday 1 October.
The 2024-25 season will end on Saturday, May 3, 2025.
First round match dates confirmed
Barnsley v Mansfield Town (Friday 9 August, 20:00 BST)
Birmingham City v Reading
Bristol Rovers v Northampton Town
Burton Albion v Lincoln City
Crawley Town v Blackpool
Exeter City v Rotherham United
Leyton Orient v Bolton Wanderers
Peterborough United v Huddersfield Town
Stevenage v Shrewsbury Town
Stockport County v Cambridge United
Wigan Athletic vs Charlton Athletic
Wrexham v Wycombe Wanderers
All matches will kick off at 17:30 BST on Saturday 10th August unless otherwise stated.
League One next stop for Hollywood Wrexham
It will be Wrexham’s first League One season in 19 years, while fellow promoted sides Mansfield and Stockport will also be ending long absences of 21 and 15 years respectively.
It took Wrexham 15 years to drop out of the National League but the Hollywood-backed Welsh club comfortably won their first challenge for promotion to League Two last season, finishing runners-up to Stockport.
Wrexham’s successive promotions from non-league football have been documented in a hit television documentary series as owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney continue their attempts to win promotion to the Championship, with the series now confirmed for a fourth season.
The match against Birmingham – a club in which NFL legend Tom Brady has a minority stake – attracted huge attention even before the fixture was announced, with the EFL reportedly rejecting a request to move the match to the United States.
The Blues will host Wrexham on Saturday 14 September before playing the reverse fixture on Saturday 25 January.
Relegated Birmingham and Huddersfield are two of seven League One teams to have played in the Premier League in the past 17 years.
Bolton are once again in a group of former top-flight clubs keen to return to the Championship, having narrowly missed out on automatic promotion before losing to Oxford in the play-off final.
The Trotters will travel to Leyton Orient in their first match of next season.
Wigan and Reading, two clubs who both dropped out of the Premier League 11 years ago and have been plagued by financial problems since then, will start their season against Charlton Athletic and Birmingham respectively.
Wigan started last season with minus eight points and finished in the middle of the table due to financial difficulties, while the Royals had a turbulent season in the third tier for the first time in 21 years, with six points deducted due to financial problems and owner Die Jonge moving to sell the club.
A takeover bid for Reading fell through earlier in the summer, forcing the club to begin negotiations with new suitors at the start of June.
Burton Albion, which avoided relegation on the final day of last season, will play its first game under new management after being acquired by Sweden-based Nordic Football Group against Lincoln City, in which former part-owner of Major League Baseball’s San Diego Padres Ron Fowler has a minority stake.