The English Football Pyramid Explained

The pyramid at a glance

Tier	Step	League	Divisions
1	—	Premier League	1
2	—	Championship	1
3	—	League One	1
4	—	League Two	1
5	1	National League	1
6	2	National League North · National League South	2
7	3	Isthmian Premier · Northern Premier · Southern League Premier Central · Southern League Premier South	4
8	4	Isthmian North · South Central · South East · NPL East · West · Midlands · Southern League Division One Central · South	8
9	5	Combined Counties · Essex Senior · Hellenic · Spartan South Midlands · Wessex and equivalents	16
10	6	Combined Counties Division One and equivalents	17

For 2026/27, the FA's initial allocation placed 996 clubs across the 48 divisions at steps one to six, in 19 leagues. Allocations can subsequently change following appeals or other amendments. Below tier ten sit the Regional NLS Feeder Leagues, with county and local football beneath them.

Tier or step?

Two numbering systems describe the same structure, and the difference trips up almost everyone.

A tier counts down from the top of the whole pyramid, so the Premier League is tier one and the National League is tier five. A step is the FA's numbering for the National League System alone, which begins at the National League. Step one is therefore tier five, and within the National League System the conversion is always four: step three is tier seven, step six is tier ten.

The Pyramid uses tiers throughout, because a single scale from the Premier League down is easier to follow and makes comparisons across the professional and non-league game straightforward. Where the FA's rules or a club's own statements refer to steps, we translate.

Tiers one to four: the Premier League and the EFL

The top four tiers contain the 92 clubs of the Premier League and the English Football League.

The Premier League at tier one has 20 clubs. Below it sit the three divisions of the EFL — the Championship, League One and League Two — with 24 clubs each, 72 in total. Clubs move between these four divisions by promotion and relegation every season.

Two practical boundaries sit at the bottom of this section. League Two is where the Football League ends: two clubs are promoted into it from the National League each season, the champions and the play-off winners. And EFL regulations prohibit League matches on artificial surfaces, so a club promoted from the National League with a 3G pitch must replace it with grass.

Tier five: the National League

The National League is tier five, the highest level traditionally described as non-league football, and step one of the National League System. It has 24 clubs and, unlike every division below it, it is national rather than regional.

It is a boundary in several senses at once. It is the lowest division covered by the Independent Football Regulator. It contains a mix of full-time and part-time clubs, including several former EFL clubs. And it is the last division from which a club can reach the Football League directly.

Tier six: National League North and South

Step two of the National League System splits into two regional divisions of 24 clubs, National League North and National League South.

These are the first divisions outside the regulator's remit, which makes tier six an unusual point in the pyramid: a club promoted from here into the National League moves not only into a stronger division but into a different regulatory regime. Four clubs are relegated from each division every season, and promotion to the National League goes to each division's champions and the winners of its play-offs.

Tiers seven and eight: the Trident leagues

Below tier six, the pyramid widens quickly and becomes increasingly local.

Steps three and four — tiers seven and eight — are run by the three so-called Trident leagues: the Isthmian League, the Northern Premier League and the Southern League.

Tier seven has four divisions: the Isthmian Premier Division, the Northern Premier League Premier Division, and the Southern League's Premier Central and Premier South.

Tier eight has eight: the Isthmian's North, South Central and South East divisions; the Northern Premier League's East, West and Midlands divisions; and the Southern League's Division One Central and Division One South.

Tiers nine and ten: the regional leagues

Steps five and six — tiers nine and ten — are run by regional leagues, with sixteen divisions at tier nine and seventeen at tier ten.

At tier nine they include the premier divisions of the Combined Counties, Hellenic, Spartan South Midlands and Wessex leagues, and the Essex Senior League, alongside equivalent regional leagues across the rest of the country. At tier ten, the Combined Counties League's Division One sits alongside the equivalent divisions elsewhere. These are examples rather than a complete list: the structure at these levels covers the whole of England, with clubs placed in the most geographically appropriate division.

Clubs at steps one to four compete in the FA Trophy, while clubs at steps five and six enter the FA Vase.

Artificial pitches are permitted within the National League System, subject to the applicable FA and competition standards and certification requirements. They have become particularly important lower down the pyramid because a single pitch can be used for first-team football, training, academy and women's teams, community programmes and external hire. The hard boundary comes with promotion into the EFL, whose regulations prohibit League matches on artificial surfaces — so for a club whose 3G pitch earns hire income through the week, reaching the Football League can mean removing part of its business. The Pyramid examined that trade-off in How 3G Pitches Rewired Non-League Football Finance.

Below tier ten

Beneath step six sit the Regional NLS Feeder Leagues, with county and local football below them, overseen by the County FAs. They form the base of the pyramid and the route in for clubs moving up from local football — though the higher a club climbs, the more its ground and organisation have to satisfy requirements that have nothing to do with results.

How promotion actually works

Winning a league is necessary for promotion but not always sufficient.

At every level of the National League System, clubs must meet the criteria for the division they would be promoted into, including ground grading, which sets minimum standards for matters such as capacity, covered accommodation, seating, floodlights and facilities. A club that does not meet those criteria is not promoted regardless of where it finishes.

The FA's regulations deal with this directly between steps three and two. Where a club finishes first in a step three division but does not meet the criteria for promotion, the club finishing second is promoted automatically in its place. And a step three club that does not meet the criteria cannot take part in the play-offs, and is not replaced.

The mechanics between those two steps are fixed. The bottom four in each of the two step two divisions are relegated, and they are replaced by the four step three champions plus four further clubs decided by play-offs. Promoted and relegated clubs are placed in whichever division is most geographically appropriate, which is why clubs near regional boundaries can move between leagues without changing level.

The practical consequence is that promotion at this end of the pyramid can be decided by infrastructure as well as football. A club with a strong team and an inadequate ground can win a title and stay where it is.

Where the money changes

The pyramid is a financial structure as well as a sporting one, and the money falls away quickly.

The figures below are illustrations from individual clubs' filed accounts for the 2024/25 season, attached to the tier each club played at that year. They are not league averages and are not presented as typical — the gap between the two League One clubs shows why no single club can stand for its division.

Tier	Club	2024/25 revenue
1	Leicester City	£186.5m
3	Wrexham	£33.34m
3	Shrewsbury Town	£7.21m
4	Harrogate Town	£4.06m
7	Prescot Cables	around £303,000

Two things stand out. The first is scale: Leicester's revenue was more than 600 times Prescot's in the same season. The second is spread: Wrexham and Shrewsbury were in the same division that year, and Wrexham's revenue was more than four and a half times Shrewsbury's. A club's tier tells you who it plays. It tells you much less about how much money it has.

Further down, figures like these can disappear from the public record altogether, for the reasons set out below. The Pyramid followed that descent in Where the Money Stops.

Who regulates what

Responsibility for English football is divided between several bodies, and which ones apply depends on the tier.

The Premier League and the EFL set their own rules for their member clubs, including financial rules, ownership tests and ground requirements. The Independent Football Regulator, established under the Football Governance Act 2025, covers the top five tiers — 116 clubs in total. Its statutory owners, directors and senior executives regime is already operating, and clubs will require an IFR licence to compete from 2027/28, including clubs promoted into the National League.

The National League sets rules for its three divisions at steps one and two. The FA oversees the National League System as a whole, including its regulations and ground grading. Below step six, the Regional NLS Feeder Leagues and the county and local game are overseen by the County FAs.

So a club at tier five answers to the regulator, the National League and the FA. A club at tier six, one division lower, answers to the National League and the FA but not the regulator. That is one of the most significant boundaries in the pyramid.

What clubs file

Most football clubs are companies, and companies file accounts at Companies House. What those accounts contain depends on the size of the company, and that is where the public record starts to thin out.

Larger clubs file accounts that disclose turnover, staff costs, profit or loss, cash and borrowing, often alongside a strategic report explaining the year. From those it is possible to reconstruct much of the business. Under the current rules, smaller companies may file filleted accounts, which omit the profit and loss account, and the smallest may file micro-entity accounts consisting of little more than a balance sheet. At that point turnover, wages and gate income are not on the public record and cannot be obtained from Companies House by anyone.

Not every club is a conventional company either. Some are companies limited by guarantee with no share capital, which means there are no shares to buy. Some are community interest companies. Some supporter-owned clubs are community benefit societies, which register with the Financial Conduct Authority rather than Companies House. And some clubs at the lower levels are unincorporated associations with no filing obligations at Companies House at all.

The effect is that financial transparency falls with the tier. At the top of the pyramid almost everything is measurable. Further down, even the question of how much money a club makes can be impossible to answer from public filings.

The women's pyramid

The women's game has its own pyramid, with its own numbering.

The Women's Super League is tier one, with 14 clubs for 2026/27, and WSL2 is tier two. Both are run by WSL Football. Below them is the FA Women's National League: the Northern Premier and Southern Premier divisions at tier three, with 12 clubs each, and four Division One sections — North, Midlands, South East and South West — at tier four, also with 12 clubs each. Regional leagues form tier five and below.

WSL clubs have operated under Financial Sustainability Regulations since 1 July 2025, which cap squad salary costs at 80% of a club's relevant revenue plus capped owner funding.

Because tiers are counted separately in each pyramid, tier one means the Premier League in the men's game and the WSL in the women's. The Pyramid specifies which it means wherever the two could be confused.