English football

The four professional divisions sit at the top of a much longer pyramid that extends down through non-league, regional and amateur football. The top division is the Premier League, with 20 clubs. Below it are the three divisions of the English Football League — the Championship, League One and League Two — each with 24 clubs. These four divisions together cover 92 professional clubs, with promotion and relegation moving clubs between them at the end of every season.

Alongside the league competitions, English football runs two major cup tournaments. The FA Cup, founded in 1871, is the oldest national cup competition in football and is open to professional clubs and many clubs from the upper levels of non-league football, subject to entry criteria. The EFL Cup (currently sponsored as the Carabao Cup) is open to the 92 professional clubs in the top four divisions. The Community Shield is a one-off match, usually played shortly before the new league season, between the previous season's Premier League champion and FA Cup winner. If one club wins both competitions, the league runner-up normally takes the other place.

The Premier League is the top division. Below it are the EFL Championship at level 2, EFL League One at level 3, and EFL League Two at level 4. Each season, three clubs drop down from the Premier League into the Championship, and three clubs come up from the Championship into the Premier League. The top two in the Championship are promoted automatically; from 2026/27, the third promotion place is decided by a six-team play-off, with third and fourth entering at the semi-final stage and fifth to eighth starting in eliminator ties. League One and League Two also use automatic promotion and play-offs, while League Two relegates clubs into the National League at level 5.

Below the four professional divisions, the National League sits at level 5 as the highest level of non-league football. Some clubs at this level are full-time professional, while others operate with smaller budgets and different structures. Below that the pyramid branches into multiple parallel regional divisions, with the system continuing for several more levels of progressively smaller geographic coverage. In theory, a club at any level of the pyramid can climb all the way to the Premier League through successive promotions — a principle that connects English clubs to the top of the system through an unbroken chain of competitive leagues.

The top four finishers in the Premier League normally qualify directly for the next Champions League league phase. In some seasons, a fifth Premier League place is added through UEFA's European Performance Spot system, based on how English clubs perform in Europe that season. The FA Cup winner qualifies for the Europa League, and the EFL Cup winner qualifies for the Conference League. If a cup winner has already qualified for Europe by another route, the place normally passes to the next-highest Premier League club not already qualified for Europe.

The system gives English clubs multiple routes into European competition. A mid-table club that wins the FA Cup can reach the Europa League despite finishing well below the qualifying positions in the league. A lower Premier League club that wins the EFL Cup can reach the Conference League. The combination of league and cup paths means England usually has one of the largest national allocations in European club football.

The FA Cup, launched in 1871, was the first national football competition anywhere in the world. The Football League, the first organised league competition, followed in 1888. Both remain central to English football, although major competitions were interrupted during wartime. The league expanded to four divisions over the following decades, and promotion and relegation between the divisions has been a feature of English football since 1898.

The major recent change came in 1992, when the 22 clubs from the old First Division broke away from the Football League to form the Premier League. The Premier League now operates as an independent competition with its own commercial and broadcast rights, while the three divisions below it are run by the English Football League (the renamed Football League). The four divisions remain connected by promotion and relegation, so a club promoted from the Championship enters the Premier League automatically the following season, and clubs relegated from the Premier League drop into the Championship.