Leagues Cup Format Explained: MLS vs Liga MX Rules
The Leagues Cup format: how MLS and Liga MX clubs are drawn together, why no game ends level, and how three Champions Cup places are won.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished MLS22 min read
- First edition
- 2019
- Leagues
- MLS and Liga MX
- Champions Cup places
- 3
- Points for a shootout win
- 2
On the night of July 21, 2023, in Fort Lauderdale, Lionel Messi came off the bench for Inter Miami against Cruz Azul and won the game with a free kick in stoppage time. It was a group-stage match in the Leagues Cup, a tournament most of the American audience watching had never heard of a month earlier. Four weeks later Miami beat Nashville SC on penalties in the final and qualified for the CONCACAF Champions Cup.
The format that produced that run is the subject of this page. The Leagues Cup is an annual summer tournament between clubs from Major League Soccer and Mexico's Liga MX, sanctioned by CONCACAF and played almost entirely in the United States and Canada. An opening phase in which MLS clubs play Liga MX clubs is followed by single-elimination knockout rounds. No game ends in a draw: a match level after 90 minutes goes straight to a penalty shootout, with three points for a regulation win, two for a shootout win, one for a shootout loss and none for a regulation loss. The top three finishers earn places in the CONCACAF Champions Cup.
The opening phase has changed shape almost every time the tournament has been played. The principle behind it has not.
How the Leagues Cup format works from first game to final
Strip away the edition-by-edition changes and the tournament has a fixed skeleton.
It runs in the middle of the summer, when the MLS season is at its midpoint and the Liga MX Apertura is only a few rounds old. It is organized jointly by MLS and Liga MX and sanctioned by CONCACAF, the confederation for North and Central America and the Caribbean. Since the expansion in 2023, nearly every match has been played at an MLS venue; the 2026 edition moved four opening-phase games to Mexico. The early games are arranged so that MLS clubs face Liga MX clubs, and the results feed a table that decides who reaches the knockout rounds. From there it is single-game elimination through to a final, with a third-place game alongside it.
The connection to the rest of the calendar is the CONCACAF Champions Cup. Three places in that competition go to the Leagues Cup's top three. That turns a summer tournament that might have been an exhibition into a qualifying route for the continent's main club competition, and it is the reason clubs take the later rounds seriously. The Champions Cup itself is covered in our guide to the CONCACAF Champions Cup format.
- Opening phaseMLS clubs play Liga MX clubs, with every drawn game settled by a shootout and points awarded on the 3-2-1-0 scale.
- Qualification for the knockoutsThe leading clubs in the opening-phase standings advance under the rules for that edition.
- Single-elimination roundsOne game per tie, hosted at an MLS venue, with a level score after 90 minutes going straight to penalties.
- SemifinalsThe two winners reach the final; the two losers meet in the third-place game.
- Final and third-place gameThe champion, runner-up and third-place club each earn a CONCACAF Champions Cup berth.
The fixed structure of the expanded tournament. The size of the field and the shape of the opening phase have changed between editions; this sequence has not.
No draws: the shootout and the 3-2-1-0 scale
The tournament's most distinctive rule is that a game cannot finish level.
In an ordinary league match, a 1-1 draw gives each side one point. In the Leagues Cup, a 1-1 draw at the end of regulation is not a result. The teams go directly to a penalty shootout, taken under the kicks-from-the-penalty-mark procedure in Law 10 of the IFAB Laws of the Game. The site's step-by-step guide to how a penalty shootout works covers the procedure itself: the coin toss, the five-kick rounds, sudden death and the rule that every eligible player must kick before anyone kicks twice.
What the Leagues Cup adds is a points value for the shootout.
| Result | Points | What it means in the standings |
|---|---|---|
| Win in regulation | 3 | The full return for winning the game in 90 minutes |
| Draw, then shootout win | 2 | A level game, with the extra point to the shootout winner |
| Draw, then shootout loss | 1 | A level game, with one point kept |
| Loss in regulation | 0 | Nothing |
There is no extra time at any stage, including the knockout rounds and the final. A tied knockout game at the 90-minute mark goes to penalties at once. That is a deliberate scheduling choice: the tournament plays many games in a short window in midsummer heat, and the organizers removed the 30 minutes of extra time that most cup competitions use.
Why the scale matters
The 3-2-1-0 system rewards a team that wins in regulation more than one that wins on penalties, which in theory discourages a side from settling for a draw and gambling on the shootout. It also means a team that loses on penalties still takes something away. In a short opening phase with only two or three games per club, that single point can decide qualification.
The format is borrowed from ice hockey and from earlier American soccer experiments, and its critics say it devalues the drawn game, which is part of soccer's logic. Its defenders say a summer tournament with a tight calendar needs results. Both are right. MLS Next Pro, the league's third-tier competition, goes further and settles every drawn league game with a shootout. For a neutral watching the Leagues Cup in August, the guaranteed result is mostly the point.
What a no-draw rule does to the last fifteen minutes
Rules about points change behavior, and the Leagues Cup's rule changes it in a specific window: the last quarter of an hour of a level game.
In a league match, a team holding a draw away from home will often settle for it. The point has value, the risk of chasing a winner is real, and the coach can explain the result to anyone. In the Leagues Cup the draw is not an outcome. A level score at 90 minutes guarantees each side one point and leaves a second one on the table, to be won by whichever team takes its penalties better. That changes the arithmetic of chasing.
The case for sitting back
A team that trusts its goalkeeper and its kickers may see the shootout as roughly even and decide that protecting a guaranteed point, and then playing for the second, is better than pushing for a regulation win that is worth only one more point than the shootout win. In the opening phase that is a rational choice for a team that needs just two points from its remaining games.
The case for pushing
The regulation win is worth three points against two for a shootout win, and in a short opening phase with only two or three games per club, the extra point is frequently the difference between advancing and going home. A team that needs a win, or that does not trust its kickers, has every reason to keep attacking in stoppage time. The single point from a shootout loss is little comfort if the table is tight.
Substitutions with the shootout in mind
The other visible effect is on substitutions. Coaches in many competitions have learned to keep a substitution in hand late in a tied knockout game, either to bring on a specialist penalty taker or, occasionally, a goalkeeper with a reputation for saving them. In a competition with no extra time, the decision arrives sooner: the coach knows the shootout begins the moment the referee ends regulation, with no 30 minutes in which to change plans. The Laws of the Game allow only players on the field at the end of play to take part in the shootout, so a late change has to be made before the final whistle, not after it.
The result is a tournament in which the final ten minutes of a level game often look different from the same minutes in an MLS or Liga MX match. Not every team chases and not every team sits. But almost every team is making a decision about the shootout well before it starts, which is exactly what the organizers wanted when they removed the draw.
The opening phase and why its design keeps changing
The tournament has used at least two different opening formats since it expanded in 2023, and the reason it keeps changing is that each design solved one problem and exposed another.
2023 and 2024: regional groups of three
When the Leagues Cup opened to every club in both leagues in 2023, the organizers had 47 teams: 29 from MLS and 18 from Liga MX. They divided most of them into 15 groups of three, organized by region (West, Central and East) to limit travel. Each group mixed clubs from both leagues. The top-ranked club from each league went straight to the round of 32, and the top two from each group advanced to join them.
Each club played only two group games. That kept the opening phase short, which was the priority with the MLS season paused. It also meant one bad night could end a club's tournament after 180 minutes, and that the group draws produced some uneven pairings. A group with two MLS clubs and one Liga MX club played differently from a group with two Liga MX clubs and one MLS club, and the travel logic sometimes overrode the competitive logic.
2025 and 2026: cross-league tables
For 2025 the field shrank to 36 clubs, 18 from each league, and the opening phase was rebuilt. Clubs were placed in regional sets of six, three from each league, and each MLS club played the three Liga MX clubs in its set. Instead of group tables, the clubs were ranked in two separate standings: one for MLS clubs, one for Liga MX clubs. The top four in each went through to the quarterfinals, which were seeded across the leagues: MLS first against Liga MX fourth, MLS second against Liga MX third, and so on. The 2026 edition kept the same shape.
The design answered a complaint about the earlier version. Under the group system, two MLS clubs could meet in the opening phase, which undermined the idea that the tournament was a contest between the leagues. Under the newer system, every opening-phase game was MLS against Liga MX, and the separate tables measured each league's clubs against the other league rather than against each other.
What stays constant
The design keeps changing because the organizers are trying to balance three things that pull against each other: a short calendar, a field large enough to include most of both leagues, and a competitive structure in which MLS and Liga MX clubs are tested against one another. What has not changed is that last aim. The Leagues Cup exists to answer, every summer, the question of how the two leagues compare. Any format that lets MLS clubs mostly play MLS clubs undermines its point.
Who enters the Leagues Cup and how the field is decided
The answer has been different almost every year.
The first two editions, in 2019 and 2021, were eight-club events, four from each league, played as a straight knockout. The 2019 clubs were invited; by 2021 the field was based on league results.
In 2023 and 2024 every club in both leagues entered. That included MLS clubs that had no realistic hope of reaching the later rounds and Liga MX clubs whose players had barely started their preseason. The full-field model was a statement of intent: the Leagues Cup was to be a central part of both leagues' calendars, not an optional add-on.
From 2025 MLS sent a qualified field rather than every club. The 18 MLS entrants were, in effect, the clubs that had reached the previous season's MLS Cup playoffs (in 2025 expansion side San Diego FC took one place in place of the Vancouver Whitecaps), which turned a strong regular season into a ticket to the following summer's tournament. Liga MX, with 18 clubs, still sent all of them.
The Liga MX side of the calendar
The full-field years exposed a mismatch that the organizers have never fully solved. Liga MX splits its season into two short tournaments, the Apertura in the second half of the year and the Clausura in the first, each with its own playoff, the Liguilla. The Leagues Cup arrives a few weeks into the Apertura. Mexican clubs have only just finished a short preseason and a handful of league games, and some are still integrating summer signings.
MLS runs a single season from late winter to December, and by midsummer its clubs are fit, settled and in rhythm. A tournament that brings the two together in July and August catches one league near the start of its campaign and the other in the middle of one. Liga MX clubs have raised the point repeatedly, and it is one reason the results of the expanded editions are hard to read as a straight comparison between the leagues.
For MLS clubs, the qualified-field model introduced in 2025 added a different incentive. A strong regular season now earned not only a playoff place and possibly the Supporters' Shield, but also an invitation to the following summer's tournament, with its gate receipts and its three Champions Cup berths. A club finishing outside the qualifying positions lost all of that, which gave the bottom half of the MLS table one more reason to care about late-season games.
Seeding
Seeding has followed the previous season's performance in each league. In the group era, it decided which clubs headed groups and which, if any, went straight to the round of 32. In the cross-league era, it shaped which Liga MX opponents each MLS club drew in the opening phase. The precise method is published in the regulations for each edition, and it has varied.
Hosting
The host question has a simple answer and a complicated one. The simple answer: games are played at MLS venues, with MLS clubs as hosts. The complicated answer involves which MLS club hosts a particular game when two MLS clubs meet in a knockout round, which the regulations settle by seeding; knockout games between two Liga MX clubs, which still take place at MLS stadiums; and the 2026 decision to stage four opening-phase games in Mexico.
The knockout rounds: single games, hosts and level scores
Once the opening phase is over, the Leagues Cup is a straight knockout. One game decides each tie. There is no second leg and no replay.
If the score is level after 90 minutes, the game goes immediately to a penalty shootout. There is no extra time. This applies in every knockout round, including the semifinals and the final. The 2023 final in Nashville, which ended 1-1 at Geodis Park, went straight to a shootout that Inter Miami won 10-9, deep into sudden death.
The host is the MLS club, or the higher-seeded MLS club when two MLS clubs meet. A Liga MX club in the knockout rounds has never played at its own stadium; the 2026 final between Toluca and Monterrey was staged at Shell Energy Stadium in Houston. That matters more than it might seem: a long flight, an unfamiliar surface (some MLS venues have artificial turf), summer heat and humidity in cities like Houston or Orlando, and a crowd that may be split but is often mostly in favor of the home side.
What the record shows
MLS clubs filled both places in the final in each of the expanded editions from 2023 through 2025. In 2026 the pattern reversed completely: all four semifinalists came from Liga MX. The table lists every final.
| Year | Champion | Runner-up | Score | Venue |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Cruz Azul | Tigres UANL | 2-1 | Sam Boyd Stadium, Las Vegas |
| 2021 | León | Seattle Sounders | 3-2 | Allegiant Stadium, Las Vegas |
| 2023 | Inter Miami | Nashville SC | 1-1, Miami won on penalties | Geodis Park, Nashville |
| 2024 | Columbus Crew | LAFC | 3-1 | Lower.com Field, Columbus |
| 2025 | Seattle Sounders | Inter Miami | 3-0 | Lumen Field, Seattle |
| 2026 | Toluca | Monterrey | 2-0 | Shell Energy Stadium, Houston |
The two invitational editions were won by Liga MX clubs. The first three expanded editions were won by MLS clubs, at home, with MLS clubs on both sides of the final, and then Toluca won an all-Mexican final in 2026. Whether the MLS run reflected a shift in the balance between the leagues or the effect of hosting nearly every game is the most argued question about the tournament, and it is taken up below.
What is at stake: three places in the CONCACAF Champions Cup
The prize that matters is continental qualification.
Under the current CONCACAF Champions Cup format, which began in 2024 with 27 clubs, the Leagues Cup sends three clubs. The champion enters at the Round of 16, skipping the first round. The runner-up and the third-place finisher enter in Round One.
That structure explains one oddity of the tournament: the third-place game. In most cup competitions the third-place game is a consolation, played in front of half-empty stands by players who would rather be on vacation. In the Leagues Cup it decides the last Champions Cup place. A club that loses its semifinal still has a 90-minute game, and possibly a shootout, between it and a continental campaign the following year.
For MLS clubs the berth carries extra weight because MLS's other routes into the Champions Cup are limited. Clubs also qualify through the MLS Cup, the Supporters' Shield, conference standings and the U.S. Open Cup, under rules that change from cycle to cycle. Our guide to the Supporters' Shield explains how the regular-season trophy feeds into the same competition. For Liga MX clubs, the Leagues Cup is one of a small number of ways in, and missing out is felt sharply by clubs that consider themselves the stronger league.
Why the champion's bye is worth fighting for
The difference between first and second place is not only a trophy. The Champions Cup's opening rounds are played over two legs, home and away, and a club that enters in Round One has to win a full two-legged tie, often against a Central American or Caribbean opponent on a difficult road trip, before it reaches the Round of 16. The Leagues Cup champion skips that tie entirely.
For an MLS club, that bye matters most in late winter. The Champions Cup's early rounds fall in February and March, when MLS clubs are in preseason or the first weeks of their league schedule and are often short of sharpness. Avoiding a round at that point in the calendar reduces the risk of an early exit and the load on a squad that is still being assembled. So a Leagues Cup final in August decides, among other things, how a club's following February looks.
What happens when a club has already qualified
A club that finishes in the top three of the Leagues Cup may also qualify for the Champions Cup another way, through its league or the U.S. Open Cup. CONCACAF's regulations set out how a duplicate qualification is resolved, and the method is fixed in each cycle's Champions Cup regulations rather than in the Leagues Cup rules.
Why almost every game is north of the border
The Leagues Cup is a tournament between American, Canadian and Mexican clubs, and until 2026 none of it was played in Mexico. That edition moved four opening-phase games south of the border; everything else stayed at MLS stadiums. The reason is commercial.
Stadiums and gate receipts
MLS has a network of soccer-specific stadiums in American and Canadian cities, built with the expectation of hosting events beyond the league season. Liga MX has larger stadiums in some cities, but scheduling, security, travel and the economics of selling tickets in dollars all pointed north. A Liga MX club playing in Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas or Chicago can draw a crowd that rivals what it draws at home, because the Mexican-American audience in those cities is large and loyal.
That audience is the commercial foundation of the tournament. Liga MX has long drawn large Spanish-language television audiences in the United States, and its clubs have played exhibitions in U.S. stadiums for decades. The Leagues Cup turns those exhibitions into competitive games and puts MLS clubs on the other side.
The complaint from Liga MX
Liga MX clubs and their supporters complained, consistently, that they never played at home. An MLS club in the Leagues Cup has its own field, its own fans and no long travel. A Liga MX club had none of that. The critics argued that the results of the expanded editions, with MLS clubs winning every final from 2023 to 2025, said at least as much about home advantage as about the quality of the two leagues. The four games staged in Mexico in 2026 were a partial answer, not a full one.
That argument has force. Home advantage in soccer is real and measurable, and the Leagues Cup gives one league all of it. Some Liga MX clubs also face a calendar problem: the tournament comes early in their Apertura, when squads are still being assembled, while MLS clubs are at the midpoint of their season. MLS clubs winning is no scandal. The real weakness of the format is that the tournament cannot tell anyone how much of that winning is due to the format.
What the Leagues Cup does to the MLS season
The expanded tournament has had an awkward relationship with the MLS calendar.
In 2023 and 2024, MLS paused its regular season for about a month to stage the Leagues Cup. No league games were played while the tournament was on. That made the tournament the only competitive soccer on the MLS schedule for several weeks and gave it a clear place in the summer. It also stretched the MLS season, compressed the league schedule on either side and drew criticism from clubs knocked out early, who faced weeks with nothing to play for.
From 2025 MLS changed course and played league games alongside the tournament. Clubs not in the Leagues Cup kept playing MLS games. Clubs in it played both. The shift reduced the gap in the league calendar and reflected the smaller qualified field, but it also meant some clubs had a heavier summer load than others.
The broader shape of the season, from preseason in January to MLS Cup in December, and where the Leagues Cup has fit in different years, is set out in our guide to how long the MLS season runs.
The All-Star Game question
The Leagues Cup has also shared summer space with the MLS All-Star Game, which in recent years has pitted MLS players against Liga MX All-Stars. The two events have to be scheduled around one another, and the league has used them together as a summer showcase of the partnership with Liga MX. Our guide to the MLS All-Star Game format explains how the opponent and the selection process work.
How it began: SuperLiga, 2019 and the partnership
The Leagues Cup is the second attempt at a regular competition between MLS and Liga MX clubs.
The first was the North American SuperLiga, played from 2007 to 2010 with a small field of clubs from each league, also in American stadiums in the summer. Pachuca won the first edition in 2007, beating the LA Galaxy on penalties in the final. The New England Revolution won in 2008, beating the Houston Dynamo, also on penalties. The tournament never established a clear place in the calendar, struggled for attention against continental competitions, and lapsed after 2010.
Nearly a decade later, MLS and Liga MX announced a broader partnership. The first product was the Campeones Cup, a single game between the MLS Cup champion and Liga MX's Campeón de Campeones, first played in 2018 when Tigres beat Toronto FC. The Leagues Cup followed in 2019 as an eight-team invitational, with Cruz Azul beating Tigres in the final in Las Vegas.
The tournament was canceled in 2020 because of the pandemic. It returned as another eight-team event in 2021, which León won against the Seattle Sounders, again in Las Vegas. In 2022 the leagues staged a short "Leagues Cup Showcase" of one-off games while they prepared the expanded version. The full-field tournament launched in 2023.
Why both leagues wanted it
For MLS, the attraction was competitive and commercial at once. Matches against Liga MX clubs draw large crowds in American cities, generate broadcast value and give MLS clubs games against opponents they would otherwise meet only in the Champions Cup. For Liga MX, the attraction was access to the American market, where many of its fans live, and a share of the revenue the tournament generated. The partnership also tied into the long-running discussion of closer integration between the two leagues, including the prospect of more joint competitions.
Where the Leagues Cup sits among North American trophies
An MLS club can win five or six different trophies in a season, and they are easily confused.
| Competition | Who plays | Format | What it is worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| MLS Cup | MLS clubs | End-of-season playoffs, final in December | League championship and a Champions Cup berth |
| Supporters' Shield | MLS clubs | Best regular-season record | Regular-season title and a Champions Cup berth |
| U.S. Open Cup | Professional and amateur clubs in the U.S. | National knockout cup run by U.S. Soccer | Domestic cup and a Champions Cup berth |
| Leagues Cup | MLS and Liga MX clubs | Summer tournament, opening phase then knockout | Three Champions Cup berths |
| Campeones Cup | MLS Cup champion and the Liga MX Campeón de Campeones | Single game | A trophy, no qualification attached |
| CONCACAF Champions Cup | Clubs from across CONCACAF | Continental knockout tournament | Continental title and a place at FIFA's club competitions |
The Leagues Cup is the newest of these and, by most measures, the most commercially important to the leagues. It is not the most prestigious. That remains MLS Cup for MLS clubs and the Liga MX championship for Mexican clubs, with the CONCACAF Champions Cup as the continental prize above both.
The U.S. Open Cup is the oldest, having run since 1914, and is the only one open to amateur clubs; its format and its tensions with MLS are covered in our guide to the U.S. Open Cup. The Leagues Cup's place in that list is unusual: it is a domestic-scale tournament with continental consequences, played across a national border that it does not actually cross.
A fair judgment on the tournament
Four editions of the expanded Leagues Cup, through 2026, have produced memorable moments, three MLS champions followed by an all-Liga MX final four, and an argument about home advantage that the format cannot resolve. The opening phase has been redesigned at least once and may be again. What has been settled is the commercial case: games between MLS and Liga MX clubs in American stadiums draw crowds, and both leagues want more of them.
The sporting case is less settled. A competition in which one league hosts nearly every game cannot measure the two leagues against each other on equal terms, and until Liga MX clubs host knockout games as well as a handful of opening-phase ones, that criticism will stand. For a fan trying to understand the tournament, the right frame is not "which league is better" but "which club handled a short, shootout-heavy summer competition best." On that question the Leagues Cup gives a clean answer each year. More on the rest of American soccer's competitions, and the other sports this site covers for U.S. readers, is collected on the USA hub.