GoalSoon · 4 August 2026
Fortuna Düsseldorf and Preußen Münster start the German third tier on Friday as two of the biggest clubs in it. Of the sixteen sides that made that drop before them, one returned at the first attempt. The jump the other way costs even more: thirteen clubs promoted to the 2. Bundesliga, not one above 1.26 points a game. Both divisions, club by club, with the error we measured on ourselves.
Fortuna Düsseldorf and Preußen Münster were relegated from the 2. Bundesliga in May. They start the 3. Liga season on Friday as two of the biggest clubs in it, and every projection you will read this week — including ours — has them near the top.
Our data holds sixteen clubs that made exactly that drop over the last ten seasons. One of them came straight back up. Dynamo Dresden won the division at the first attempt in 2021/22. Seven more got back eventually, taking two, three or four seasons about it. Eight are still in the third tier or below.
| Dropped into the 3. Liga | Season | Finished | Pts/game | Back up after |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dynamo Dresden | 2020/21 | 1st | 1.97 | 1 season |
| Braunschweig | 2021/22 | 2nd | 1.81 | 2 seasons |
| Ingolstadt | 2019/20 | 4th | 1.66 | 2 seasons |
| VfL Osnabrück | 2021/22 | 6th | 1.63 | 2 seasons |
| Dynamo Dresden | 2022/23 | 6th | 1.82 | 3 seasons |
| Wehen Wiesbaden | 2020/21 | 6th | 1.47 | 3 seasons |
| VfL Osnabrück | 2024/25 | 14th | 1.26 | 2 seasons — this summer |
| Magdeburg | 2019/20 | 14th | 1.24 | 4 seasons |
| Duisburg | 2019/20 | 5th | 1.63 | still down |
| Hansa Rostock | 2024/25 | 5th | 1.58 | still down |
| Wehen Wiesbaden | 2024/25 | 9th | 1.45 | still down |
| Regensburg | 2025/26 | 13th | 1.29 | still down |
| Ingolstadt | 2022/23 | 11th | 1.24 | still down |
| Aue | 2022/23 | 14th | 1.18 | dropped further |
| Würzburger Kickers | 2021/22 | 18th | 0.89 | relegated again |
| Ulm | 2025/26 | 19th | 0.87 | relegated again |
Season shown is the club's first one down. Two of them — Osnabrück and Dresden — appear twice, having made the drop twice.
The interesting part is that these clubs are not bad at this level. Their average is 1.44 points a game against a division average of 1.37 — better than the league, and nowhere near enough. Second place in the 3. Liga last season took 1.89. Being one of the biggest clubs in the room is worth about three points across a season. It is not worth a promotion.
VfL Osnabrück won the 3. Liga with 80 points, 2.11 a game — the second-best season anyone has put up in that division in the seven we hold, behind Magdeburg's 2.13 in 2021/22. Cottbus finished second on 1.89. Both are promoted.
Thirteen clubs in our data have made that same jump. Not one of them has taken more than 1.26 points a game in the 2. Bundesliga. The average is 0.96, which is a relegation number: six of the thirteen went straight back down.
| Promoted to the 2. Bundesliga | In the 3. Liga | Then | Finished |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elversberg | 1.95 | 1.26 | 11th |
| Dynamo Dresden | 1.84 | 1.21 | 11th |
| Hansa Rostock | 1.87 | 1.21 | 13th |
| Arminia Bielefeld | 1.90 | 1.15 | 13th |
| Preußen Münster | 1.76 | 1.06 | 15th |
| Dynamo Dresden | 1.97 | 0.94 | 16th |
| Wehen Wiesbaden | 1.84 | 0.94 | 16th |
| Braunschweig | 1.68 | 0.91 | 17th |
| Ulm | 2.03 | 0.88 | 17th |
| VfL Osnabrück | 1.84 | 0.82 | 18th |
| Regensburg | 1.66 | 0.73 | 18th |
| Würzburger Kickers | 1.68 | 0.73 | 18th |
| Ingolstadt | 1.87 | 0.62 | 18th |
Ulm is the clean case. They won the 3. Liga at 2.03 points a game, the third-best figure in our records, took 0.88 in the 2. Bundesliga, went straight back down, and have now been relegated out of the third tier altogether. Osnabrück are the other kind of case: they have made this exact jump before, in 2023/24, carrying almost exactly the level they carry now — and finished bottom.
We built a projection for both divisions from the seasons we hold, and then measured how wrong it is by holding out one season at a time and predicting it from the others. In the 2. Bundesliga it misses by 0.225 points a game — 7.7 points across a season — against 0.252 for handing every club the league average and 0.374 for assuming last season repeats.
In the 3. Liga the same method misses by 0.251. Giving every club the league average misses by 0.259. The model is three per cent better than knowing nothing.
So we publish bands rather than positions, and the measured error next to the number every time. Where a club has no measured history at all — Fortuna Köln, Großaspach, Meppen and Würzburger Kickers have come up from the Regionalliga, which our data does not cover — we give it no projection, rather than quietly handing it the league average and calling that a forecast.
Every club in both leagues, with its current squad, every arrival and departure our data has recorded since 1 May, how much of last season's minutes are still in the dressing room, and the projection with its measured error:
The full 2025/26 season for both divisions — every table, every match, every player who played, in Excel and PDF — is in the season packs, free. The 3. Liga one is built entirely from our own database, because the public match record for German football stops at the second tier.