French football

The top of the French football system is Ligue 1, an 18-club top division usually contested across a 34-game season from August to May. Below it are Ligue 2, the Championnat National at the third tier, and a wider network of national, regional, and departmental divisions. Promotion and relegation connect the tiers, with two clubs going up to and two coming down from Ligue 1 each year, plus a promotion/relegation play-off involving clubs from Ligue 1 and Ligue 2.

Alongside the league competitions, French football runs the Coupe de France — France's main cup, created in 1917 and one of the oldest cup competitions in football — and the Trophée des Champions, a one-off super cup between the previous season's Ligue 1 winner and Coupe de France winner. The Trophée des Champions is often staged outside France as part of the league's international expansion efforts, and its date and venue can vary from season to season.

Ligue 1 is the top division, with 18 clubs. Below it is Ligue 2, also with 18 clubs, run by the same governing body — the Ligue de Football Professionnel. The top two clubs from Ligue 2 are automatically promoted to Ligue 1 at the end of each season. Teams finishing third, fourth, and fifth in Ligue 2 enter play-offs, and the eventual winner faces the 16th-placed Ligue 1 club in a two-legged promotion/relegation play-off. The bottom two from Ligue 1 drop down to Ligue 2.

Below Ligue 2 is the Championnat National at the third tier, an 18-club semi-professional competition run by the French Football Federation rather than the Ligue de Football Professionnel. From 2026/27, the third tier is being relaunched as Ligue 3, with the names of the lower national tiers also changing as part of the same reform. Below the third tier, clubs are organised into regional groups before the pyramid continues through regional and departmental leagues. The system covers football across mainland France, Corsica, and the French overseas departments and territories.

The top three Ligue 1 finishers usually qualify directly for the next Champions League league phase, while the fourth-placed club enters Champions League qualifying. The next league places normally feed into the Europa League and Conference League, but the exact allocation can change depending on UEFA access-list rules, titleholder places, and European Performance Spots.

The Coupe de France winner qualifies for the Europa League. If the winner has already qualified for the Champions League through their Ligue 1 finish, the place passes to the next-best Ligue 1 finisher not already qualified for Europe. In a typical season, five or six French clubs end up in European competition the following year, although the exact number can vary.

The Coupe de France was created in 1917 under the influence of Henri Delaunay, making it one of the oldest cup competitions in football. The competition was originally called the Coupe Charles Simon, in tribute to a French sportsman who died in World War I, before becoming the Coupe de France in 1919. Ligue 1 followed in 1932 with the introduction of professional football in France — the league was initially called the National before being renamed Division 1 in 1933 and finally Ligue 1 in 2002.

The competition has been dominated across different eras by different clubs. Saint-Étienne were the dominant force in the 1960s and 1970s, winning ten titles. Marseille took over in the late 1980s and early 1990s, winning four in a row and the 1993 Champions League before a match-fixing scandal stripped them of their 1992-93 league title. Olympique Lyonnais won seven consecutive Ligue 1 titles between 2002 and 2008, a record streak in French football. Paris Saint-Germain have dominated since 2012 after the Qatar Sports Investments takeover, with their 2025 Champions League win completing their first continental treble.