16.08.2026

Kharkiv - Shakhtar. Preview and prediction for the UPL match on 16.08.2026

Football.ua presents a preview of the Ukrainian championship match, which will take place on August 16 and will start at 15:30.

As part of the third round of the Ukrainian Premier League 2026/27 in the Kyiv region, Kharkiv will play a home match against Donetsk's Shakhtar.

Kharkiv - Shakhtar

Sunday, August 16, 15:30. Left Bank, Kyiv region. Main referee - Oleksandr Shandor (Lviv). Live broadcast on UPL.TV

The central match of the third round. Without any doubt. Mladen Bartulovich's team suffered a defeat to Zhytomyr's Polissya in an away game at the beginning of the week, demonstrating the fact that Kharkiv needs to be very cautious with its own ambitions. They were not ready to face a direct competitor for high places in the standings.

But the UPL calendar is unforgiving this season. So right after the "wolves," Kharkiv will play against the reigning champion, who will have to face Ruslan Rotan's team in a week. This is how football fate softly hints that the top three leaders of the national championship this season need to be very carefully watched. However, there are also Lviv's Karpaty, with whom Shakhtar will play immediately after Zhytomyr.

Arda Turan's team is entering an extremely challenging period of the season when they will have to play a series of important matches while keeping in mind their performances in the UEFA Champions League. Once again, the "miners" will have to split their focus on two fronts, but everything indicates that the Turkish specialist manages the workload on his team very effectively in terms of gameplay.

Shakhtar played relatively few friendly matches during the preseason - and not without reason. Apparently, the Donetsk team aims to gain momentum through duels on the internal arena, while their competitors played a lot and may be in better playing form. Although the Polissya and Kharkiv match showed that Bartulovich's team has a lot to work on.

The expectations for the match are really high. Last season, it was difficult for the "miners" to resist Kharkiv's trademark football under the current coaching staff, but the victory in the second round turned out to be one of the components of the future championship. Now the teams meet at the very beginning of the season - there should be a completely different mood and absence of excessive weight of tournament tasks. A year earlier, Kharkiv managed to take advantage of Shakhtar's constant European commitments, but then they played in the middle of September, while now the Donetsk team prepared intensively for the important clash.

And at the same time, Turan had to solve the dilemma regarding the injured Pedrinho da Silva, because even against Epicenter in the last round (2:0), Shakhtar's midfield was a bit sluggish in creating scoring opportunities without him. Meanwhile, Bartulovich will have to prove now that the club's quality summer transfer window will indeed lead to improved results, which was almost imperceptible in the match against Polissya. Kharkiv then openly owed their fans beautiful football, so they will strive to make up for it.

Possible lineups:

Kharkiv: Yermakov - Krupsky, Pavlyuk, Shabanov, Martinyuk - Castillo, Kalyuzhny, Yatsyk - Zabergja, Parako, Rashitsa.

Shakhtar: Riznyk - Karavaev, Bondar, Matviyenko, Pedrinho Azevedo - Pedrinho da Silva, Nazarina, Bondarenko - Alisson, Elias, Prosper.

Key facts:

- Shakhtar will play their 510th away match in the UPL;

- Shakhtar can achieve their 720th victory in the championship;

- Kharkiv may suffer their 20th home defeat in the UPL;

- Shakhtar has not lost in 24 away matches in the championship: 16 wins and eight draws;

- Kharkiv has scored 7 goals in their last six matches;

- Marian Shved can score 30 goals in the championship, while Kauan Elias and Oleg Ocheretko (all from Shakhtar) - 10 each;

- Georgiy Yermakov (Kharkiv) can play his 20th "clean sheet" match in the UPL.

Head-to-head meetings: