Explainer · evergreen
How the FA Cup works: 700-plus teams, one trophy, no replays any more
In one line: The oldest cup competition in football, explained: who enters when, why giant-killings happen, the 2024 rules change that ended replays, and what the winners actually earn.
The FA Cup is the oldest football competition in the world — first played in 1871-72, when football itself was still inventing its own rules. Its founding idea has never been beaten: every club in the pyramid, from the Premier League down to the lowest sanctioned tiers, can enter the same competition. Recent seasons have drawn more than 700 entrants. One of them lifts the trophy at Wembley in May.
Who enters, and when
The competition starts absurdly early — extra-preliminary rounds in August, when nobody is thinking about cups — with the smallest clubs at the bottom of the National League System. Survivors climb: League One and League Two clubs join in the first round proper in November; the Championship and Premier League enter in the third round in January, which is when the competition becomes a national event. That staircase is the design, not a flaw: it means a village club can, in principle, be drawn against a club that pays its striker more per week than the village is worth.
Why giant-killings happen here
Two fixtures make upsets likely: one-off ties (no second chance to recover), and the draw giving the lower-ranked side home advantage — a pitch their stars have never played on, a crowd at full voice from the first whistle. Knock out a giant once and it counts. This is the product the FA Cup sells and the reason the third-round weekend still stops the football calendar. The same openness is what makes the pyramid below the Premier League worth following — promotion and relegation is the league version of the same idea.
The rules change you need to know: replays are gone
Until recently, a drawn tie meant a replay — the fixture rearranged, at the other ground, winner takes all. That tradition produced some of the competition's best stories and its biggest lower-league paydays. From the 2024-25 season it is gone: the FA agreed with the Premier League in April 2024 to scrap replays at every round, settling drawn ties that day with extra time and then penalties. The official reason is calendar reality — European competitions expanded, top-flight weekends are full, and rounds four, five and the quarter-finals no longer clash with Premier League fixtures at all. The honest trade-off, stated plainly: clubs below the Championship lost a genuine revenue day, fans were angry about it, and the competition gained a cleaner schedule. Both things are true at once.
The final, and what winning is worth
Since the 2024-25 season the final sits on the penultimate weekend of the Premier League season — its own weekend, top-flight league games cleared. The winner takes the trophy, a place in the Europa League league phase the following season, and prize money accumulated through every round — serious money even for clubs knocked out early. History note for the pub quiz: Wanderers won the first final in 1872; Arsenal hold the record for most cups; and in 2025 Crystal Palace lifted it for the first major trophy in their history — proof the door really is open. For how European nights connect to this, see how the Champions League works and how many English teams get in.
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