Liga MX


Liga MX, officially named Liga BBVA MX for sponsorship reasons, is a professional association football league in Mexico and the highest level of the Mexican football league system. Formerly named Liga Mayor and Primera División de México. The league has 18 participating clubs, each season is divided into two short tournaments, Apertura and Clausura. The champions of each tournament are decided by a final knockout phase, commonly known as liguilla. Since 2020, promotion and relegation has been suspended until 2026–27.
The inaugural edition as a professional and national league was the 1943–44 season, with Asturias finishing as the first champions in history. In all, 113 editions of the league have been held.
Liga MX currently ranks first in CONCACAF's league ranking index. According to IFFHS, it was ranked as the 10th strongest league in the first decade of the 21st century. According to CONCACAF, the league with an average attendance of 25,557 during the 2014–15 season, draws the largest crowds on average of any football league in the Americas and the third largest crowds of any professional sports league in North America. The league ranks second in terms of television viewership in the United States, behind the English Premier League.
América is the most successful club with sixteen titles, followed by Guadalajara and Toluca with twelve titles each, Cruz Azul with nine titles, Tigres UANL and León with eight titles each. In all, twenty-four clubs have won the competition at least once.

History

Amateur era

Prior to the Liga Mayor, there was no national and professional football league in Mexico, and football competitions were held within relatively small geographical regions. The Liga Mexicana de Football Amateur Association, a local league consisting of teams near and around Mexico City, was the first amateur football league created in Mexico, and also other regional leagues were created, which were the Liga Amateur de Veracruz, Liga Amateur de Puebla, Liga Occidental De Jalisco and the Liga Amateur del Bajío that had talented clubs.
In 1922, after the foundation of the first football federation in Mexico, they created the Campeonato de Primera Fuerza, which was the first amateur league organized by a national football federation. It was held from 1922 to 1943, although most of the participating teams were from Mexico City and the first matches held outside the country's capital were played until the 1940–41 season.
Many club owners were keen to remain amateur although they paid players under the table. The increasing interest in football would not thwart a unified professional football system in the country. The first true national and professional league in Mexico was established in 1943, under the name Liga Mayor.

Liga Mayor

The Federación Mexicana de Fútbol announcement of the nation's first professional league brought interest from many clubs to join. The FMF announced that 10 clubs would form the Liga Mayor, six clubs from the Liga Mexicana de Football Amateur Association, two clubs from the Liga Occidental, and two clubs from the Liga Veracruzana.
The inaugural season had 10 founding clubs:
Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, many small clubs faced many economic difficulties which were attributed to the lack of international competition by Mexico's clubs and an unrewarding league format. Consequently, clubs from Mexico that placed high in the league standings could not afford to participate in the overarching continental competitions, such as the Copa Libertadores.
The 1970 World Cup held in Mexico was the first World Cup televised on a grand scale. The season following the FIFA World Cup, the FMF changed the league format and established a final phase to determine the national champion. This was done to regenerate interest and reward teams that placed fairly high in the standings.
The final phase, known as liguilla, was played using various formats to determine the champions. The most common format was a straight knock-out between the top eight teams in the table. At other times the league was divided into groups with the top two in each group, often as well as the best 3rd placed teams, qualifying for the liguilla and in some seasons the playoff matches themselves involved teams playing in groups with the group winners playing off for the title. The format was changed from season to season to accommodate international club commitments and the schedule of the Mexico national team.
The change in the rules affected teams that traditionally dominated the table, as talented teams that had not performed well in the regular season were able to perform successfully in the final phase.

Liga MX

Prior to the start of the 2012–13 season, the organization Liga MX/Ascenso MX was created to replace the FMF as the main organizing body of the competition. The league also announced a rebranding, with the introduction of a new name and a new logo.
On August 20, 2018, it was announced that Liga MX would begin testing the use of VAR technology. The initial test run was conducted during under-20 matches played inside senior league stadiums, with live testing across senior Liga MX matches taking place during weeks 13 and 14 of the Apertura tournament. The league needed final approval from FIFA to fully implement the technology.

Competition format

Regular phase

Liga MX uses a single table of 18 clubs that play two short tournaments resulting in two champions per season. The season opens with the Apertura from July to December, followed by the Clausura from January to May. This format matches other Latin American schedules and corresponds with FIFA's world footballing calendar, which "opens" in July/August and "closes" in April/May of the next year. The top 10 clubs advance to the final phase for each tournament, with the top 6 clubs in the table at the end of the regular phase of the tournament qualifying directly to the Liguilla, and the next 4 clubs qualifying for the play-in round that determines the next 2 Liguilla spots. If one club is in last place in the league's relegation table, that club is replaced by the one that finished 11th in the regular phase.
From 1996 to 2002, the league followed a schedule consisting of two short tournaments in the season, Invierno and Verano tournaments. From 2002 to 2011, the 18 clubs were divided into three groups of six, with the top two from each group and the two best third-place clubs qualifying for the Liguilla. The clubs played in the same group for each tournament. The qualification phase of the tournament lasted 17 weeks, with all clubs playing each other once per tournament in a home and away series over both tournaments.

Final phase

The final phase of each tournament, commonly known as Liguilla, consisting of 10 clubs that qualify for the tournament based on regular phase point totals — the six highest-placed advance to the quarterfinals while clubs seven through ten compete in the play-in round. The clubs ranked 7-10 play a single match hosted by the higher seed; the winner of the match between 7th and 8th-placed advances to the quarterfinals as the 7th seed. The losing club then faces the winners of the match between 9th and 10th-placed; the winner of that match advances and is seeded 8th in the quarterfinals. For the remaining rounds, the clubs are paired according to seeding, with the highest-seeded club playing the lowest-seeded and so on. Each tie is played over two legs with the winner on aggregate score progressing.
The champions are awarded the Liga MX trophy, and the runners-up is awarded a smaller version of the trophy. The start of Liguilla in 1970 modernized the league despite the disagreements between the traditionalists and the modernists. Clubs that were near bankruptcy were now better able to compete and generate profits.

Tie-breaking criteria

If at least two clubs finish the regular season with an equal number of points, the following criteria are used to break the tie:
  • Goal difference
  • Number of goals scored
  • Number of away goals scored
  • Head-to-head matchup
  • Best placed in the general quotient table
  • Fair play points in all group matches
  • * Yellow card: −1 points
  • * Indirect red card by second yellow card: −3 points
  • * Direct red card: −3 points
  • * Yellow card and direct red card: −5 points
  • Drawing of lots.

    Relegation

Originally at the end of a season, after the Apertura and Clausura tournaments, one club is relegated to the next lower division, Ascenso MX, and one club from that division is promoted and takes the place left open by the relegated team. Currently, the relegated club is determined by computing the points-per-game-played ratio for each club, considering all the games played by the club during the last three seasons. The club with the lowest ratio is relegated; if the club that is in last place in the relegation table is among the 12 clubs qualifying for the Liguilla at the end of the Clausura tournament, the 13th place team qualifies for the Liguilla instead. For clubs recently promoted, only the games played since their promotion are considered. The club promoted from Ascenso MX is the winner of the Campeón de Ascenso, the division's super cup between the Apertura and Clausura champions. If a club becomes the champions in both tournaments, it is automatically promoted.
Prior to the start of the 2017–18 season, the rules for relegation and promotion changed: if a club wins promotion but does not meet certain Liga MX requirements the relegated Liga MX club of that season will be obligated to pay the prize money to the Ascenso MX club for winning the promotion playoff, which should be utilized to fulfill necessary requirements for promotion within the next season, and remain in Ascenso MX, and the relegated Liga MX club will remain in the top division. However, if the relegated Liga MX club cannot distribute the prize money to the promoted Ascenso MX club, both clubs will lose their right to play in Liga MX and must play in Ascenso MX the following season.
As of the 2018–19 season, only six clubs met the full requirements to be promoted to Liga MX, those clubs being Atlético San Luis, Atlante, Celaya, Juárez, Sinaloa, and UdeG.
On April 16, 2020, the Ascenso MX was folded due to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the lack of financial resources. Liga MX President Enrique Bonilla later announced during a video meeting with the club owners of the league that promotion and relegation would be suspended for six years. During the suspension, the Ascenso MX was replaced with the Liga de Expansión MX although no club from that league will be promoted to Liga MX nor any Liga MX team that performs poorly will be relegated from the Liga MX for the time being.
In May 2025, a group of ten league member clubs from the Liga de Expansión MX filed a lawsuit before the Court of Arbitration for Sport seeking the reinstatement of promotion and relegation between the Liga de Expansión MX and Liga MX; four clubs subsequently dropped the lawsuit, the six remaining clubs formed an opposing bloc within the league, which was formed with the aim of combating some of the measures that had occurred previously, their first triumph was the rejection of the relocation of Celaya F.C. to Veracruz and the sale of the affiliation certificate between Cimarrones de Sonora and Club Jaiba Brava.
On September 4, 2025, the Court of Arbitration for Sport issued its verdict on the dispute filed by the six Liga de Expansión MX clubs seeking to reinstate promotion to Liga MX. The ruling established the return of relegation on the Liga MX starting with the 2026–27 season; however, the CAS allowed the Mexican Football Federation to retain the authority to establish the requirements for clubs to be promoted to the top flight of Mexican football, returning to a situation similar to that in place before the creation of the Liga de Expansión MX in 2020.