Copa del Rey Matches Postponed After Spain Train Crash

By TaazaPulse News Desk · Published: 29 October 2026 · TaazaPulse International Desk

Spanish football stopped on Wednesday. The Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) postponed all 24 Copa del Rey first-round ties scheduled for Wednesday as a mark of respect after the train collision near Urda, in Toledo province, in which two high-speed trains crashed on the Madrid–Seville line on Wednesday morning and dozens of people were killed. The cup will resume with a revised schedule; the football, for one day, was not the story.

The postponement swept away an entire evening of the Copa del Rey's most romantic round — the single-leg first round in which Spain's biggest clubs travel to the grounds of lower-division sides. Instead, the day belonged to rescue workers in Toledo and to a country absorbing one of its worst rail disasters. The RFEF's decision, taken swiftly and without dissent from the clubs, moved all 24 Wednesday ties to dates yet to be announced.

A round stopped by tragedy

The collision happened at around 9am on Wednesday near Urda, on the high-speed line between Madrid and Seville, when two trains collided — an accident whose scale became clear through the day as the death toll climbed into the dozens. Against that, football's place was obvious, and the federation acted accordingly: no matches, no debate. The 24 postponed ties were spread across Spain, from top-flight clubs' trips to regional grounds to all-lower-division matchups, and every one of them will now be refixed.

Thursday's 14 scheduled first-round ties were left in doubt as the country observed the aftermath, with the RFEF expected to confirm the revised calendar once the immediate emergency has passed. The federation must now find dates in an already congested season — a logistical problem that nobody in Spanish football was complaining about on Wednesday.

Tuesday's giant-killing: Sestao River stun Espanyol

The decision also paused a small piece of football history in the making: the first round is the only stage at which all of Spanish professional and semi-professional football shares one draw, and several of Wednesday's postponed ties had sold out their little grounds days in advance. Those tickets will be honoured on the rearranged dates, the RFEF indicated, and the towns involved will get their nights — later, and in a different emotional register.

The football that did get played this week produced the result the Copa del Rey exists for. On Tuesday night, fourth-tier Sestao River beat La Liga side Espanyol 4-3 after extra time, with Jon Rojo scoring the winner in the 121st minute — a giant-killing so complete that by the following day Espanyol had sacked their coach. Manolo González, in charge since March 2024 and across 107 matches, paid for a cup humiliation that landed on top of a La Liga campaign already sinking into the relegation zone, with five league games without a win.

Sestao's win is the first round in its purest form: a single leg, at the smaller club's ground, under lights, against a top-flight side that cannot hide behind a return match. Espanyol led the tie's story for most of the night only in status; on the pitch, the Basque side matched them for two hours and then beat them in the 121st minute. For Sestao River's players and supporters, it is the result of their lives. For Espanyol, it is a crisis.

The rest of Tuesday's round

Elsewhere on Tuesday, the bigger clubs were ruthless. Villarreal won 5-0 away at Manacor, with goals from Diatta, Oluwaseyi, Cardona, Nizar and Nicolas Pépé spreading the scoring across the team. Málaga won 3-0 at Sporting de Alcázar — the club's first victory of a difficult season, and a reminder that the cup's early rounds can restart a campaign as well as end one. Elche, the other La Liga side in action, were given a scare by sixth-tier UD Pinatar, who led 1-0 before Elche recovered to win 3-1, Ezequiel Ponce scoring twice and Ali Houary adding the third. Eighteen ties were completed on Tuesday in all.

Why the first round matters in Spain

To understand why Tuesday's results resonated — and why Wednesday's empty fixture list felt so strange — it helps to know what the modern Copa del Rey's first round is. Since a format change in 2019, the early rounds are single-leg ties played at the ground of the lower-division club. There is no return match, no away-goals cushion, no second chance at a big stadium. A La Liga side drawn away to a fourth-tier club must go to a small ground, on a small pitch, in front of a town that has waited all year for the night, and win in 90 or 120 minutes or go home. The format was designed to restore exactly what it produced on Tuesday: Sestao River, at their Las Llanas ground, beating Espanyol in the 121st minute.

It is also why the postponement carries a logistical sting beneath the solemnity. Twenty-four ties must be squeezed into a calendar that already bends around league, European and international commitments, and the smaller clubs involved — for whom a cup night against famous opposition can be a season's biggest gate — will feel the rearrangement most. The RFEF has not yet published the new dates. When it does, the cup will resume its rhythm, and Sestao's reward for the week's one completed miracle will be the second-round draw.

Espanyol's week, meanwhile, shows the other edge of the format. A top-flight club that loses one of these ties does not just exit a cup; it absorbs a humiliation in public, at a village ground, with nowhere to hide. González's dismissal the next day was the club reaching for the reset button — 107 matches and a March 2024 start forgotten in one Basque night. Whoever replaces him inherits a relegation fight and a support that has just watched the season's lowest moment. The Copa gives, and the Copa takes away.

What happens next

The Copa del Rey will pick up where it stopped: the postponed 24 ties to be rearranged, Thursday's programme to be confirmed, and the second round to follow once the first is complete. Sestao River's reward for the week's one completed miracle is a place in that second round and, they will hope, another giant at home. Espanyol begin again under new management, whenever the club appoints one.

The week's events also carried a quieter significance for how Spanish football sees itself. The Copa del Rey's first round is the one week of the season when the sport's pyramid becomes visible all at once — billion-euro squads sharing a fixture list with village clubs — and the federation's decision treated that whole pyramid as one family in mourning. Lower-division clubs, whose postponed nights against famous opponents were their season's financial and emotional peak, accepted the decision without a murmur of complaint that reached the public record. In a football culture often caricatured as cynical, the week's unity was genuine, and it was noticed.

But the abiding image of this cup week will not be a goal. It will be an empty fixture list on a Wednesday night, a federation and a football country deciding — correctly, and without hesitation — that some evenings are not for football. TaazaPulse's coverage of the Toledo collision itself, and of the cup's revised schedule when it is announced, continues in our international section.