German football

The top of the German football system is the Bundesliga, an 18-club top division contested across a 34-game season from August to May. Below it are the 2. Bundesliga at the second tier, the 3. Liga at the third tier, and a network of regional divisions below. Promotion and relegation connect the tiers: two clubs move automatically between the Bundesliga and 2. Bundesliga each season, while a third place is contested in a two-legged promotion/relegation play-off.

Alongside the league competitions, German football runs the DFB-Pokal — the national cup, dating to 1935 — and the Franz Beckenbauer Supercup, formerly known as the DFL-Supercup, as a one-off season-opening match between the Bundesliga champion and the DFB-Pokal winner. The defining feature of German football is the 50+1 rule, an ownership regulation that requires the members of each club to hold a majority of voting rights. The rule shapes how German clubs are run, who can control them, and how the league culture differs from other major European leagues.

The Bundesliga is the top division, with 18 clubs. Below it is the 2. Bundesliga, also with 18 clubs, run by the same governing body — the Deutsche Fußball Liga. The top two clubs from the 2. Bundesliga are automatically promoted to the Bundesliga at the end of each season. The third promotion place is decided by a two-legged play-off between the third-placed club from the 2. Bundesliga and the 16th-placed club from the Bundesliga — a play-off that has historically favoured the Bundesliga club, although there are notable upsets.

Below the 2. Bundesliga is the 3. Liga, a 20-club third tier run by the German Football Association rather than the DFL. The Regionalliga sits at the fourth tier, split into five regional divisions: North, Northeast, West, Southwest, and Bavaria. Below that, the Oberliga at the fifth tier and the Landesliga and lower regional competitions extend the pyramid through the German football system.

The 50+1 rule, introduced in 1998, requires the parent members' club of each German professional club to hold a majority of voting rights in the football company. The practical effect is that no external investor — corporation, individual, or sovereign wealth fund — can normally take overall voting control of a Bundesliga club. The rule is a major reason German clubs have generally avoided the takeover patterns seen in the Premier League and other major leagues over the past two decades.

Exceptions to the 50+1 rule exist for clubs whose external investor has had a long-standing historic role in the club. The two main long-standing examples are Bayer Leverkusen, historically linked to Bayer, and VfL Wolfsburg, historically linked to Volkswagen. Hoffenheim was granted an exception in 2015, but later returned majority voting rights to the parent club. RB Leipzig formally complies with the rule, although its membership structure has been widely criticised by supporters as a workaround. The rule is often associated with the Bundesliga's distinctive matchday culture, strong supporter involvement, and more cautious ownership model.

The top four Bundesliga finishers usually qualify automatically for the Champions League league phase the following season. Under UEFA's current format, Germany can receive an additional Champions League place through a European Performance Spot if German clubs collectively rank among the top two associations in the previous season's European competitions. The next-best Bundesliga finishers below the Champions League places qualify for the Europa League and the Conference League.

The DFB-Pokal winner qualifies automatically for the next Europa League. If the winner has already qualified for the Champions League through their Bundesliga finish, the place passes to the next-best Bundesliga finisher who has not already qualified for European competition. In a typical season, six or seven German clubs end up in European competition the following year.

Before 1963, German football was contested through a system of regional leagues, with the national champion decided each year through a knockout play-off between the regional winners. The Bundesliga was founded in 1962, with the first season played in 1963-64. The unified national league replaced the older regional structure and quickly established itself as the country's central competition. The 2. Bundesliga followed in 1974, and the 3. Liga as a unified third tier was launched only in 2008.

The DFB-Pokal is older than the Bundesliga itself. The competition was first held in 1935 under the name Tschammer-Pokal, named after a Nazi-era sports official, and was suspended in 1944 due to World War II. It was reinstated in 1953 under the DFB-Pokal name and has run continuously since. East Germany operated its own separate league and cup competitions from 1949 until German reunification in 1990, after which the East German clubs were integrated into the unified system through the 1990-91 transitional season.