Hannover 96 2026/27 season preview: Transfers, pre-season, predicted lineup & predictions

After Köln, Hamburg and Schalke secured promotions in the past two seasons, Hannover 96 will hope to be the next big German club to return to the Bundesliga. Christian Titz’s side were already close to doing so last term before their abysmal form in the final month of the season.

How was their 2025/26?

Hannover have been away from automatic promotion places since matchday five, but they started the final day in a playoff spot. However, a rollercoaster 3-3 draw with Nürnberg wasn’t enough at the end as Paderborn leapfrogged them in the standings before taking Wolfsburg’s Bundesliga spot.

Die Roten have lost the fewest games in the division alongside champions Schalke, but there was a ten-point gap between the teams at the end of the season. Only Darmstadt recorded more draws than Titz’s troops as there were no winners in over one-third of their games.

Finnish striker Benjamin Källman was their top-scorer with 14 goals as no other Hannover player got more than five. Captain Enzo Leopold and goalkeeper Nahuel Noll, who both signed for Bundesliga clubs this summer, were the only players to feature in all 34 games.

The Coach

Before joining Hannover last summer, Christian Titz also achieved a top-five 2. Bundesliga finish with Magdeburg. The 55-year-old was at the helm when HSV faced the first-ever relegation in 2018 as a 50% winning rate from his eight-game spell was insufficient to keep the traditional club in the Bundesliga.

Titz, who led Magdeburg to a 2. Bundesliga promotion, became the first to coach Hannover for an entire season since Stefan Leitl in the 2022/23 campaign. Current Austria coach Ralf Rangnick (2002) and André Breitenreiter (2017) are the last two coaches to guide the two-time German champions to Bundesliga football.

Transfers

With Leopold joining Borussia Mönchengladbach as a free agent and the returns of Noll and Noël Aséko to their parent clubs, the former HSV sporting director Jonas Boldt is facing a busy summer in his first window at Hannover.

Daisuke Yokota’s unresolved future could add another assignment if the Japanese midfielder followed Noll's footsteps to Padeborn. Young Swiss custodian Pascal Loretz signed from FC Luzern to start between the posts for the promotion hopefuls.

19-year-old striker Taycan Etcibasi is another marquee signing after his 19 goals for Borussia Dortmund youth teams in the 2025/26 season. The Germany U19 international finished top-scorer in the Premier League International Cup, an annual youth tournament hosted by the Premier League, and scored the winner for BVB in the final against Real Madrid Castilla.

Frenchman Jean Hugonet is another newcomer as the center-back preferred to reunite with his former coach after the end of his contract at Magdeburg. With the transfer market staying open until the first day of September, Boldt and co. have enough time to work on replacements for Leopold and Aséko.

Pre-season preparations

A well-taken brace from Swedish winger Kolja Oudenne and Lars Gindorf’s penalty-kick sealed a 3-0 win over Eredivisie side PEC Zwolle for Hannover in their last pre-season game on Saturday. All three goals came after the break as Titz’s men produced a solid performance in front of a strong home support at the reconstructed Niedersachsenstadion (Heinz von Heiden Arena).

16,000 fans were present in the season-opening ceremony after the match. “It's incredible how people here love and live the club," Titz told the fans a week before the first competitive game of the season. Apart from a 3-2 defeat to Paderborn in two 60-minute halves on July 11th, Hannover won all their pre-season fixtures.

Predicted starting lineup

Icelandic international Stefán Teitur Thórdarson is set to play a major role as he takes the captain’s armband ahead of his first full season at the club. Gindorf, who finished top-scorer in 3. Liga with 28 goals from midfield for Alemannia Aachen, will also push for a starting spot on his return from a successful loan spell.

Etcibasi and fellow youngster Yunus Ünal will start the season with hopes of making their breakthrough in first-team football. With all signs pointing to Yokota’s departure, Titz would hope for another new signing in the attacking department.

Predicted Lineup (3-4-3): Loretz; Okon, Tomiak, Hugonet; Neubauer, Thórdarson ©, Taïbi, Oudenne; Bundu, Källman, Gindorf

Fixture list

Hannover will face newly-promoted Energie Cottbus in the opening matchday of 2. Bundesliga before hosting relegated Wolfsburg the following week. Cottbus knocked out Hannover in the first round of the DFB-Pokal last term.

Former Hannover midfielder Leonardo Bittencourt was among the new signings at Cottbus for their first 2. Bundesliga campaign in over a decade. Hannover, who started last season with four successive wins, will then face Darmstadt 98 and Karlsruher SC.

The Lower Saxony derby with Eintracht Braunschweig will be played on matchday 9 and 26. Last season, Hannover did the double over their fierce rivals for the first time since 1992/93. The last two games of the league season will be against Kaiserslautern and Arminia Bielefeld.

Expectations & Prediction

In terms of several performance measures, Hannover were ahead of Elversberg and Paderborn last season. However, the side with the best away record finished just outside the top-three. Titz’s side can now go one better as there are no clear favorites for automatic promotion besides Wolfsburg.

Fortuna Düsseldorf started last season with similar hope to only get relegated to the third-division at the end, but I expect the top two spots to be filled by clubs from Lower Saxony.