The Premier League has confirmed that it will publish the full judgements of its Key Match Incidents (KMI) Panel on referee and VAR calls for the first time this season, alongside fuller quotes from officials on its Match Centre account and expanded RefCam audio. The KMI Panel has assessed contentious incidents since the 2022-2023 campaign, but its conclusions have stayed private until now, feeding into officials’ performance payments whilst also occasionally leaking out to clubs anyway.
Referees to Explain Their Thinking in Public
From this season, selected Match Centre posts will carry direct quotes from the on-field referee or the VAR, explaining the reasoning behind a contentious call, rather than the brief summary that has been offered previously. That could mean a referee’s own account of why a penalty was given, or the VAR’s reasoning for staying out of a review. It is something that supporters have been crying out for virtually since the Video Assistant Referee system was introduced.
RefCam, which will be used in one or two matches each round, will, for the first time, carry audio of a referee talking to players. What we will not get to hear are any conversations between the referee and the VAR, which are under restrictions set by the International Football Association Board (IFAB). The Premier League has said that it will keep pressing IFAB for more of those conversations in the future, but supporters are not being recommended to hold their breath.
How the Panel Reaches its Verdicts
Five people sit on the KMI Panel, which is made up of three ex-players or coaches, plus a nominee each from the Premier League and officiating body Pro Ref. Every major incident in a round of fixtures goes before the panel and a straight majority decides whether a call stands up to their scrutiny. Judgements are made against the actual Laws of the Game, rather than a fan’s instinct for what should have happened, which keeps the panel’s error count lower than supporters might expect.
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Because VAR’s threshold for intervening is ‘clear and obvious’, a verdict can go either way. The referee could be wrong, but the VAR could also be right to have left it alone. That is something that most supports struggle to understand and certainly seems ridiculous on the face of it. The majority of fans just want the officials to make the right decision according to the rules, not pick and choose when to intervene depending on the likes of the importance of the match at hand.
The panel recorded 25 VAR errors last season, which was up from 18 in 2024-2025, though down on the 38 logged in its first year it was in play, 2022-2023. It could be argued the uptick prompted this year’s transparency push, letting the league frame a worse set of figures before critics do so.