FA Cup: how the qualifying rounds and the replay rule work

Farnham Town's home match against Cirencester Town, scheduled for Tuesday 22 September 2026 at 19:45 at The Memorial Ground, sums up on its own what this guide explains: the FA Cup, officially the Football Association Challenge Cup, is the English competition in which a draw can still turn into an entire second match, but only along one specific stretch of the road to Wembley. The two sides drew 2-2 on Saturday 19 September, in the 2nd Round Qualifying, and the rule that sends the replay to a Tuesday is the same one that organises the whole phase that comes before the competition's most famous part.

What follows is the full map of that pyramid: why it takes in 743 clubs in the 2026/27 season, how a draw gets settled in each of the 14 rounds, why the replay was scrapped from the main phase from 2024/25 and survives only in qualifying, and how much the rules pay, round by round, to winners and losers. Every number here comes from the official 2026/27 regulations or from a dated, open source, because the FA Cup changes date, opponent and round every year: only the mechanism behind it is permanent.

What the FA Cup is, and why it reaches down to level 9 of the pyramid

The idea was born on 20 July 1871, in the offices of The Sportsman newspaper, when the Football Association's secretary, C. W. Alcock, proposed to the FA committee that "it is desirable that a Challenge Cup should be established in connection with the Association for which all clubs belonging to the Association should be invited to compete". The first edition was played in the 1871/72 season, which makes the FA Cup the oldest national football competition in the world. The 2026/27 edition follows the same founding principle: any club affiliated to the Football Association can, in theory, enter and dream of reaching Wembley.

That principle has a technical limit, not a political one: the rules open the competition to every eligible club down to level 9 of the English league system, with level 10 clubs acting as stand-ins to fill a place if a club above them withdraws. There is no qualification by invitation and no closed tournament: a village club playing at level 9 of the pyramid enters through the Extra Preliminary Round, in August, knowing that to reach the trophy in May it has to eliminate clubs up to eight levels above its own, one by one, with no shortcuts.

It is that design, not the prize money, that sets the FA Cup apart from any league table built on points: in a closed league, the bottom club of a lower division never meets the champion of a higher one. In the FA Cup, that is only a matter of the draw and of surviving earlier rounds. I still think that is the competition's biggest sporting asset, even more than the final prize: an entry point kept open down to level 9 of the pyramid, with no invitation and no closed tournament, for any affiliated club.

The full pyramid: 14 rounds in the 2026/27 edition, from zero to Wembley

Counting from the Extra Preliminary Round to the Final, the 2026/27 FA Cup has 14 rounds. The first six, from the Extra Preliminary Round to the 4th Round Qualifying, make up the qualifying phase: added together, they reach 619 matches, all involving clubs from outside the English elite. Only after that phase does the Competition Proper begin, the main phase, which in the 2026/27 edition has eight rounds up to the decider. It is a literal funnel: in 2026/27, thousands of players chase 32 places to reach the part of the competition that goes out to the whole world on television.

The maths behind every row of the table is always the same: add the round's new clubs to the winners of the previous round, divide by two, and the result is the number of matches. In the 2026/27 Extra Preliminary Round's opener, where there are no previous winners, that is 438 new clubs divided by two, 219 matches. Four rounds later, the 3rd Round Qualifying gets no new club at all: it is the 80 winners of the 2nd Round Qualifying, divided by two, the same 40 ties the FA drew on 21 September 2026 for the weekend of 3 October.

Each of the six qualifying rounds in the 2026/27 edition admits a new level of the pyramid, from the top down: the Extra Preliminary Round opens to level 9 and part of level 8; the Preliminary Round completes level 8; the 1st Round Qualifying brings in level 7; the 2nd Round Qualifying, the one involving Cirencester and Farnham, admits National League North and National League South, level 6; and only in the 4th Round Qualifying does the National League itself, level 5, the highest outside the professional system, join in. Every level that enters piles extra pressure on whoever has already been competing since August.

Who goes straight in: the 92 exempt clubs, and the 651 climbing the pyramid in the 2026/27 edition

The official 2026-27 regulations define the Competition Proper, the main phase, as the sum of two sources: 92 clubs "selected by the Professional Game Board and exempted from playing in the Qualifying Competition", plus the 32 clubs that survive the qualifying phase (Rule 44). On the other side of the equation are, in the 2026/27 edition, 651 clubs, from level 5 to level 9 of the English system, competing for exactly those 32 places over six rounds. In practice, roughly 20 clubs fight for each place: 651 divided by 32 comes to just over 20.

The 92 exempt clubs do not all enter together, but in two groups very unequal in prestige. 48 of them, the 24 League One clubs and the 24 League Two clubs, enter already in the 1st Round Proper, set for 7 November 2026: they are the ones hosting or visiting the 32 survivors of the qualifying phase, completing the 40 ties of that opening round of the main phase. It is the first meeting between the smaller professionals, who also sell tickets and also work with a tight budget, and whoever has fought through the whole funnel since August.

The other 44, the 20 Premier League clubs and the 24 Championship clubs, only enter two months later, in the 3rd Round Proper, set for 9 January 2027. The 2025/26 edition confirms the rule in practice: Chelsea, "as a Premier League team", started their season at exactly that stage, beating Championship side Charlton Athletic 5-1 away from home. An elite club can, in theory, reach the 2026/27 final having played just five rounds before it: the 3rd, 4th and 5th rounds proper, plus the quarter-final and the semi-final.

The three-window mechanism: why Tuesday is the replay's default date

The rules organise every round of the qualifying phase into up to three "Windows" (Rule 51); the Competition Proper follows a different rule, with Saturday as the default date (Rule 68). The first runs from Friday to Sunday and holds the round's original matches. The second, the following Monday to Thursday, holds the replay of whoever drew in the first window, with Tuesday as the default date, or a match that had to be postponed. The third window, the following week, exists for the replay of whoever drew again in the second window, or for a further postponement. It is a double-purpose ruler: it settles both the drawn match and the bad weather, the unplayable pitch, the safety concern.

It's worth separating the two things the window settles, because the rules treat the replay and the postponement as different problems with the same calendar fix. The replay comes from a result, the draw; the postponement comes from something unexpected that stops the original match happening. The two compete for the same slot in the calendar because the logic is identical: the missing match falls into the next window, preferably on a Tuesday, so as not to push the winner's schedule back too far.

It is Rule 59 that fixes Tuesday as the default: "the default date for replaying a Competition Match drawn in the First Window is the Tuesday immediately following the First Window". That is exactly what happened with Cirencester Town and Farnham Town: the original match fell on Saturday 19 September 2026, inside the first window of the 2nd Round Qualifying, and the 2-2 draw automatically pushed the replay to the following Tuesday, 22 September, at 19:45, at Farnham's ground, The Memorial Ground. No decision made round a table: it is the calendar running on its own.

The rule for draws, phase by phase

The replay is not available at every stage. Rule 86 is direct: "Where a Competition Match up to and including the 4th Round Qualifying has resulted in a draw, it shall be replayed". The text stops right there. From the 1st Round Proper onwards, including the whole phase that television follows, that option no longer exists. That holds even for a headline clash between two giants: if it ends level, there is no second match, no return visit to the opponent's stadium.

When the draw persists (in a qualifying-phase replay, or in any main-phase match), the rules go straight to extra time: "30 minutes of extra time shall be played (two equal halves of 15 minutes)", and, "where the score is still level after the 30 minutes of extra time, the winner shall be determined by penalties" (Rule 87). It is the same formula as the World Cup and the Champions League: extra time and penalties within the same match, with no second game ahead.

Where the replay died, and what took its place since 2024/25

The change has a date and an official source. On 18 April 2024, the Football Association published the statement that redesigned the format: "From the first round proper, the competition will be played without replays". The statement also confirms the length of the Premier League deal behind the change: "The agreement, which is for a minimum of six years, starts next season", that is, from 2024/25. It was not a decision the FA took alone: the two sides negotiated for months over how to strengthen every English competition at once, with fewer free dates on the European calendar.

The stated reason is the calendar. From the 5th round onwards there had been no replay for years; the change for 2024/25 was to stretch that rule across the whole Competition Proper, because of the expanded Champions League and Europa League, which came to take up more Tuesday-to-Thursday dates through the European season. As compensation, every round of the main phase gained an exclusive weekend, with no Premier League fixtures played on the same Saturday or Sunday, including the final itself.

From the point of view of whoever plans the whole season, the logic holds up: fewer extra matches, less injury risk, more schedule certainty for clubs in European competition. But the cost fell, as always, on those with less: a small club that drew at home against a giant lost the chance to cash in on an away replay, with pricier tickets and a bigger stadium. I'd argue the FA got the calendar right and got the trade-off wrong: the replay lost from the main phase never came back as extra revenue anywhere else in the rules.

In practice, what replaced the replay, from the 1st Round Proper onwards, is the same 30 minutes of extra time and the same penalty shoot-out that settles a draw at any other stage (Rule 87), just without the run-up of a whole second match. That is the exact line that gives this guide its name: from the Extra Preliminary Round to the 4th Round Qualifying, a draw still buys a full replay; from the 1st Round Proper onwards, including for clubs entering straight in like the Premier League in January, a draw buys only another 30 minutes.

The 21 September draw: the 40 ties of the 3rd Round Qualifying

On 21 September 2026, the FA confirmed the draw for the 3rd Round Qualifying: 40 ties for the weekend of 3 October 2026, each one worth £5,625 to the side going through and £1,875 to the side going out, as set out in Rule 280.1, the same 75% to 25% split that runs through the whole qualifying phase (£5,625 is exactly 75% of the £7,500 the two sides add up to). That draw is the most recent picture of the competition at the point this guide was researched, on 22 September 2026.

Not every tie in that draw came out with both sides set. Eleven of the 40 (27.5%) were still waiting, at the time of the draw, on a 2nd Round Qualifying replay not yet played, among them tie number 27: Merthyr Town or Truro City against Cirencester Town or Farnham Town, the very same match that opens this guide. At the draw, that side of tie number 27, due in October, was reserved for the winner of the replay scheduled for 22 September, Farnham or Cirencester.

The price of every round in the 2026/27 edition: from the Extra Preliminary to Wembley

In the 2026/27 edition, the 75% to winner, 25% to loser formula, fixed by Rule 280.1, applies across the whole qualifying phase, from the cheapest round to the priciest. In the Extra Preliminary Round, the pair adds up to £1,500 (£1,125 plus £375), and £1,125 is, again, exactly 75% of that. The ratio never changes, only the scale: in 2026/27, the winner's prize in the 3rd Round Qualifying, £5,625, is exactly five times the Extra Preliminary Round's, the same multiplier that separates the loser's prize in the two rounds, £1,875 against £375.

The climb between the first round and the last is dizzying. The Final's winner pockets £2,120,000; the Extra Preliminary Round's winner, in the competition's opening round, pockets £1,125. That is a gap of more than 1,884 times between the August cheque and the May one, lifted at Wembley, and yet that first payment, made to an amateur club, is still real money: for a level-9 club of the pyramid, £1,125 can be a whole month's operating budget.

The underdog economy: why losing can still pay off

From the 3rd Round Proper onwards, once every big club is in, the rules tilt the financial balance towards whichever side is hosting or visiting them, win or lose the match. Rule 230.2 sets out that, in matches between the 3rd Round Proper and the quarter-finals involving "a Club competing outside of the Premier League or EFL" and "a Club competing in the Premier League or EFL", the match's net gate receipts split like this: 55% to the club from outside, 45% to the elite club, even when the match is played at the giant's own ground.

In the semi-final, the logic changes: the receipts from both matches are pooled and 58.5% goes to the four semi-finalists, 32.5% to the FA and 9% to the Pool, the fund redistributed to grassroots football (Rule 243). In the Final, the finalists themselves get nothing from the gate: 90% goes to the FA and 10% to the Pool (Rule 244). After 14 rounds of climbing in the 2026/27 edition, the side that reaches Wembley has already banked its share through the prize table, not through the ticket sold that Saturday.

The upset that proves the express can still come off the rails

All that engineering of rounds and percentages exists for a moment like 10 January 2026. That Saturday, in the 3rd Round Proper of the 2025/26 edition, Macclesfield beat Crystal Palace 2-1. The FA itself described the result as the biggest shock in Emirates FA Cup history, saying Macclesfield had "bridged a gap of 117 league places" to stun the then holders of the trophy, and had become "the first Non-League side to beat the Cup holders in 108 years".

Who lifted the 2025/26 trophy

The 2025/26 trophy went to Manchester City, who beat Chelsea 1-0 in the final on 16 May 2026, at Wembley, with a goal from Antoine Semenyo in the 27th minute of the second half. It was the club's 8th title in the competition's history and City's fourth straight final, the first team ever to string together four in a row. The final of the following edition, 2026/27, was set for 22 May 2027, also at Wembley.

Reaching four straight FA Cup finals had no precedent until Manchester City managed it, precisely because the single-match, no-second-leg knockout format is supposed to catch out any favourite sooner or later. If City strung together all four, the reason is not written in any rule in this guide: it is in the squad. The rules treat City and the club with no exemption at all, entering right at the Extra Preliminary Round exactly the same way from the moment they step onto the pitch.

Regulation details worth knowing

The minimum age to play the FA Cup is 16 when the match involves a club from the non-professional system, the National League System (Rule 97). Only when neither club comes from that system does the minimum age drop to 15 years old by 31 August of the current season (Rule 98.1 of the 2026-27 rules). The 2026-27 regulations themselves give the example: for this edition, a player has to have been born before 1 September 2011. It is the same rule that, in theory, would already have cleared a teenager for the 2026/27 qualifying phase who, in another competition in the same country, would still be playing at youth level, with no game against adults.

The 438 clubs that enter only in the Extra Preliminary Round, in August, playing rivals of the same size from the same regional league, are the pyramid's real base, level 9 and part of level 8, which the rules let in. If one of them pulls out before it starts, level 10 stands ready to replace it. Between that first Saturday in August 2026 and the final in May 2027 at Wembley, the distance is measured in 14 rounds, but the right to try all of them is born, year after year, from the same founding principle of 1871: any club affiliated to the Football Association can compete.