THE AFL has scrapped the centre bounce and removed the substitute rule under significant changes to be introduced for the 2026 season.

But a decision on the mooted 'last disposal' out of bounds rule won't be made until after the next AFL Commission meeting this month.

On Wednesday, the League confirmed umpires will no longer be required to bounce the ball to restart play at any stage during elite-level matches.

New AFL football boss Greg Swann said the decision was made with umpire health and safety in mind, as well as a desire to create consistency across all competitions, with the bounce optional in the SANFL and WAFL, and not in use in junior and talent pathways.

AFL STATEMENT Changes to Laws of the Game and AFL Regulations

In a statement, he acknowledged the tradition of the bounce, but said the game had evolved, and the benefits of removing the bounce were too big to ignore.

"We've got pathways and umpires coming through, we've got some fantastic decision makers in those groups, but they can't bounce the ball," Swann later told journalists on Wednesday.

"That's been an issue, and we need to make that pool of umpires bigger. The other thing that we think that will help in that space is [it's] a skill, you have to put a fair bit of time into practicing. What we'd rather do is have the umpires putting their skills into making the correct decisions.

"We've spoken to a lot of former players about getting involved in umpiring, all of them talk about it's too hard to bounce the ball, so hopefully that helps with that. And we've got some terrific female umpires as well who just struggle physically to get the ball up as high as they need, [who are] good decision makers, and this should help that too."

Swann also believes umpires throwing the ball up will lead to fewer collisions between the whistleblowers and players.

"We also anticipate this decision will be safer for umpires and players at the contest and lessen the likelihood of umpire contact at the restart," he said.

"It is a difficult skill to execute, and we believe is preventing some of our best umpiring prospects from progressing any further in the AFL pathway despite having elite decision-making skills.

"By removing the skill aspect of bouncing the ball, umpires can focus their energy on adjudicating the game and consistency of decision making."

Clubs will now name 23 players in their match-day teams, including five on the interchange bench, with Swann confirming in his press conference on Wednesday that from 2026, the All-Australian team will be extended to 23, with five on the bench.

Feedback from players, clubs and the AFLPA was considered before making the decision.

"Go to the 18 clubs, probably the strongest bit of feedback on all the things we spoke about was removing the sub," Swann said.

"We're not changing the number of interchanges or anything like that, so there'll be five on the bench. We want to try and lock that away for a long time … as certainly as long as I'm in the chair.

"There's no adverse things from costs and things like that, because they were already paying the subs the same they would anyway, so it's not going to cost the game any more.

"It'll give coaches a little more flexibility, whether they play two ruckmen, for example, because they've got that extra person on the bench. We don't do everything in here on the basis of [whether] the clubs want it, but in this instance, there was a strong push for it.

"Having come out from clubland, it was always difficult for the person who was the sub. In our case, in Brisbane, you'd be down as the sub, then you'd have to fly back to Brisbane and play in the VFL and all that sort of stuff. In this instance, we just thought it was a no-brainer."

Swann has previously declared his support for the last disposal rule, which is already used in AFLW and the second-tier SANFL.