The A-League

The A-League Men is Australia's top men's professional football league. It includes clubs from Australia and New Zealand, although it is not part of New Zealand's domestic league pyramid. In 2025-26, the competition is contested by 12 clubs — 10 from Australia and two from New Zealand: Wellington Phoenix and Auckland FC, who joined in 2024-25.

The league has been held continuously since 2005-06, when it was launched by Football Federation Australia to replace the National Soccer League. The competition has been run by the Australian Professional Leagues since 2020, when the A-League clubs gained independence from Football Australia. The A-League awards two main trophies — the Premiers Plate for the club finishing top of the regular-season ladder, and the Championship for the winner of the end-of-season Grand Final. The two trophies recognise different achievements, with the Championship widely treated as the higher-profile prize.

The season usually runs from October to April, taking advantage of the Australian summer and avoiding the winter schedule used by several other major Australian sports. In 2025-26, each club plays 26 regular-season matches across 26 rounds. Every club plays each opponent at least twice, with selected opponents faced three times. Three points are awarded for a win, one for a draw and none for a loss.

The club finishing top of the ladder at the end of the regular season is awarded the Premiers Plate. For eligible Australian clubs, finishing first normally carries Australia's highest-ranked AFC club competition place, although the exact continental allocation can change under AFC rules. Tiebreakers begin with goal difference, goals scored and total wins, followed by head-to-head measures and other criteria. The Sydney Derby between Sydney FC and Western Sydney Wanderers has produced the highest A-League attendance, with 61,880 fans at ANZ Stadium in October 2016.

After the regular season, the top six clubs enter the A-League Men Finals Series. The clubs finishing first and second receive a first-round bye. The clubs ranked third and sixth, and fourth and fifth, meet in elimination finals, with the winners progressing to two-legged semi-finals against the top two. The Grand Final is a single match hosted by the highest-placed finalist.

The Grand Final winner is awarded the A-League Championship trophy and is crowned A-League Men champion. The Championship is the higher-profile of the two A-League trophies and is the trophy most commonly associated with being the A-League champion in popular reference. The format follows the wider Australian sports model used by the AFL (Australian rules football) and NRL (rugby league), where regular-season performance and a knockout finals series are both rewarded but the finals winner is the recognised champion.

Australian clubs qualify for Asian Football Confederation club competitions through league and cup performance, but the exact number of AFC Champions League Elite and AFC Champions League Two places can change depending on AFC slot allocations and club eligibility rules. The Premiers Plate winner usually receives Australia's highest-ranked league qualification place if eligible, while the Australia Cup winner qualifies for AFC Champions League Two under the current cup route.

New Zealand-based A-League clubs are treated differently for continental qualification because New Zealand belongs to the Oceania Football Confederation rather than the AFC. This means Wellington Phoenix and Auckland FC can shape the A-League table and Finals Series, but their continental qualification position is not the same as that of Australian clubs.

Australian clubs have a modest but improving record in Asian competition. Western Sydney Wanderers won the AFC Champions League in 2014, becoming the first and so far only Australian club to win Asia's leading club competition. The win came in just the club's second season in the A-League and remains one of the most remarkable achievements by a newly established club in modern Asian football. Several other A-League clubs have reached the knockout stages across the modern era.

Australian football's pre-A-League history included the National Soccer League (NSL), which ran from 1977 to 2004. The NSL faced financial difficulties and ended in 2004. The Crawford Report in 2003 recommended a new fully professional national competition with a salary cap, a single-team-per-city policy, and stronger corporate backing. Football Federation Australia launched the A-League in 2005 with eight founding clubs — including the New Zealand Knights, the first non-Australian club in the competition.

The league has grown and changed across the modern era, with expansion to Wellington (2007), Melbourne Heart (later Melbourne City, 2010), Western Sydney Wanderers (2012), Western United (2019), Macarthur FC (2020), and Auckland FC (2024). Auckland FC quickly became one of the league's most notable expansion stories by winning both the Premiers Plate and Championship in 2025-26. Several other clubs have left the league, including the New Zealand Knights, Gold Coast United and North Queensland Fury. Western United's participation was placed into conditional hibernation for the 2025-26 season, reducing the competition to 12 clubs for that campaign. The competition gained independence from Football Australia in 2020, with the Australian Professional Leagues taking over governance of the A-League Men, A-League Women and youth competitions.