2010 Latvian Higher League (Latvian: LMT Virslīga 2010) was the 19th season of top-tier football in Latvia. It began on 9 April 2010 with the first round of games. Liepājas Metalurgs were the defending champions, having won their second league title last season.
With the re-expansion of the league to 10 clubs, the format of the competition was altered for the third year in a row. The ten clubs played 18 rounds of matches, once at home and once away, against each of the other nine clubs in the league. After this, another nine rounds of matches were played for a total of 27 matches. The clubs finishing in the first five positions after 18 rounds received the benefit of hosting five of their last nine matches.[1]
Promoted to the Higher League from the First Division automatically were last season's First Division champions, Jelgava.
Daugava Rīga finished in 8th place in last year's Higher League competition and competed in a promotion/relegation playoff against the runners-up of the First Division, Jaunība Rīga. Jaunība Rīga won this two-legged playoff 1–1 (1–0 on away goals scored) and won promotion to the Higher League for this season and Daugava Rīga was relegated to the First Division.
Despite finishing last year's First Division competition in 9th place, Daugava Daugavpils were offered a place in this year's Higher League competition, which the club accepted.
Source: Latvian Football Federation(in Latvian) Legend: Blue = home team win; Yellow = draw; Red = away team win. Notes:
^Jelgava were assigned as home team for both first and second round of matches against Olimps/RFS for unknown reasons; this match was the latter of these two and has been put in this table cell for organisational reasons.
Source: Latvian Football Federation(in Latvian) Legend: Blue = home team win; Yellow = draw; Red = away team win.
Relegation play-offs
At season's end, the 9th place club in the Latvian Higher League, Tranzīts Ventspils, was supposed to face the runners-up of the Latvian First League, FC Jūrmala, in a two-legged playoff, with the winner being awarded a spot on next year's Higher League competition. However, before this playoff began, the LFF received information from Tranzits that it would not participate in the playoff and, further, was forfeiting its place in the Latvian Higher League. Because of this, FC Jurmala achieved promotion to the Higher League automatically.
Nathan Júnior from Skonto also scored 18 goals during the season, but while Rakels had scored all his goals from game-play, Junior netted 3 goals from the penalty spot.