Season 3: how promotion and relegation work

A 5-tier pyramid, one route to the top

With Season 3, ELDT's divisions are being reshuffled into a pyramid: fewer leagues at the top, plenty more underneath, and all of them with 16 clubs. Each tier has 4 times as many leagues as the one above:

• 🏆 Primera División: 1 league, with the 16 best.
• 🥈 Primera Nacional: 4 leagues (Primera Nacional 1 to 4).
• 🥉 Primera B: 16 leagues.
• ⚽ Primera C: 64 leagues.
• 🌱 Primera D: 256 leagues.

Every league is "linked" to one league above and has 4 leagues below it. That relationship is what drives promotion and relegation: your league always swaps teams with the same league above and the same 4 below.

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Where does your club start?

It depends on how you finish Season 2. T2 is played out in full, with its own promotion and relegation, and your club's final position decides which tier you start Season 3 in. Within each tier, clubs are split across the leagues according to the T2 ranking, in a snake format, so no league ends up packed with contenders.

You do not need to do anything: the move happens automatically and you carry on with your club, your squad, your stadium and your money. The divisions of today (from E to V) are history.

How each position is decided

In each 16-team league, the final table is read like this:

• 1st — Goes up automatically. The league winner moves up to the league above.
• 2nd — Plays the promotion play-off to go up. They get a second chance against a team from the league above.
• 3rd to 8th — Stays put. A quiet season, with no division prize or punishment.
• 9th to 12th — Plays the promotion play-off to avoid relegation. They defend their place in the division against a 2nd-placed team from below.
• 13th to 16th — Goes down automatically. The bottom 4 drop, one to each league in the tier below.

That means each league above takes in the 4 champions from the leagues below and sends down its own bottom 4, one to each of them. The leagues always stay at 16.

Two logical exceptions: in Primera División the 1st does not go anywhere, because they are the champion; and in Primera D, as there is no lower tier, the bottom teams do not go down.

The promotion play-off, step by step

The promotion play-off replaces the old mini-league. It is played between the 2nds from the 4 leagues below and the 9th to 12th from the league above:

1. The four 2nds are ordered from strongest to weakest.
2. The 9th from above plays the weakest 2nd, and the 12th plays the strongest 2nd. Finishing 9th rather than 12th gives you a friendlier opponent.
3. It is one match only, with home advantage for the team from the higher division.
4. If it is level, it goes to penalties, which you can follow kick by kick in the report.
5. If the lower-division side wins, they swap divisions: the 2nd goes up and the team from above goes down. If the team from above wins, everything stays as it was.

Why the change?

With only one promotion over 30 matchdays, half the table was left with nothing much to fight for halfway through the season. With the play-off, out of 16 teams, 9 still have something to play for right up to the final matchday: the champion, the 2nd, the four fighting to avoid relegation and the four at the bottom. The 9th cannot relax, and the 2nd still has a reward to chase.

An example

Say you are managing in Primera C 12, which is linked to Primera B 3:

• If you finish 1st, you play T4 in Primera B 3.
• If you finish 2nd, you play the promotion play-off away at one of the 9th to 12th teams in Primera B 3. Win and you go up.
• If you finish 10th, you host the 2nd from one of the 4 Primera D leagues linked to yours. Win and you stay up; lose and you go down.
• If you finish 14th, you drop into one of those 4 Primera D leagues.

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What if you are just starting out?

New managers enter at tier 5. From there, it is 4 promotions to Primera División, in Argentina and in every new country that joins with Season 3. Each season, the champion of your league and the play-off winner take one step closer to the top.

See the countdown and everything about Season 3 · Full Season 3 guide