The league is scheduled to play its first 18 rounds before the winter break (10 December 2016 – 25 February 2017) finishing its first stage of tournament in March.

With the continuation of the military conflict in the eastern oblasts (regions) of Ukraine since 2014 and the Russian occupation of Crimea (see the map), the league was forced to change its format again and will now be contested by 12 teams after being cut from 14 in the 2015–16 season.

On 6 May 2017 in Kharkiv, Shakhtar Donetsk secured its 10th championship title with a win over Zorya Luhansk and four more rounds to play in the season.

[3] On 29 February 2016, the Ukrainian Premier League administration announced that there will be changes to the competition format for the 2016–17 season.

[72] The laureates of the 2016–17 UPL season were:[107] Number of sanctions were implemented by FIFA against some Ukrainian clubs due to their refuse to follow their contractual agreements with players and coaching staff.

[108] Separate and much bigger sanctions were implemented against FC Dnipro for number of instances among which are cases with Danilo Sousa Campos, Juande Ramos and others (see above).

[109][110] The FIFA sanctions were also implemented against FC Karpaty Lviv due to the "Semir Štilić case" (see above).