Your club won on Saturday, so why are they playing in a completely different competition a few days later? Here’s how the FA Cup, League Cup and Community Shield fit into the English football season.

Winning the Premier League might be the biggest prize in English domestic football, but it isn’t the only trophy clubs are chasing.

Unlike most American sports, English teams can compete in several competitions at once. A Premier League club might play a league game at the weekend, a European match in midweek and then face a lower-division team in a domestic cup.

England has two main knockout cups, the FA Cup and League Cup. They may look similar at first, but their history, format and importance are quite different.

The FA Cup began in 1871, making it the oldest national football competition in the world. The first final followed in 1872, when Wanderers beat Royal Engineers
1-0.

More than 150 years later, the idea is still simple: bring clubs from across English football together in one knockout competition.

That means a tiny non-league club can potentially face one of the biggest teams in the country. For 90 minutes, league position, wage bill and stadium size guarantee nothing.

That’s what people mean when they talk about “the magic of the FA Cup.”

Not every club enters at the same time.

The competition begins in August, months before the Premier League teams arrive. For 2026/27, 743 clubs were accepted, reaching from the Premier League all the way down into non-league football.

Smaller clubs begin by working through several qualifying stages:

Extra Preliminary Round
↓
Preliminary Round
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First Round Qualifying
↓
Second Round Qualifying
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Third Round Qualifying
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Fourth Round Qualifying

Survive all of that, and you reach the First Round Proper.

That’s when League One and League Two clubs enter. Championship and Premier League teams don’t join until the Third Round Proper in January.

So when a tiny non-league club faces Manchester United, Arsenal or Liverpool in January, it may have been fighting its way through the FA Cup since August.

They’ve earned their way there.

And for a small club, simply getting that far can transform its season.

Once your team enters, it’s straightforward.

Lose and you’re out.

There’s no league table or playoff series. Premier League clubs enter in the Third Round Proper, followed by the Fourth Round, Fifth Round, quarter-finals, semi-finals and eventually the FA Cup Final at Wembley Stadium.

If a match is tied, there are no traditional FA Cup replays under the current format. Instead, it can go to extra time and then penalties if necessary.

The semi-finals and final are both played at Wembley.

First, there’s the dream of beating a much bigger team.

Then there’s the money.

Clubs earn more prize money the further they progress. In 2026/27, an Extra Preliminary Round winner receives £1,125, a Fourth Qualifying Round winner gets £9,375, and winning in the First Round proper is worth £47,750.

The eventual champion receives £2.12 million for winning the final, in addition to prize money earned in earlier rounds.

Those early amounts won’t transform a Premier League giant, but they can mean something very different to a non-league club.

Then comes the dream draw. A home game against a Premier League team could mean a packed stadium, television coverage and extra matchday income.

Sometimes the draw itself can be worth almost as much as what happens on the pitch.

For smaller clubs, FA Cup money genuinely matters.

Premier League managers do rotate their teams in the FA Cup, particularly against lower-division opponents.

But the competition still carries considerably more prestige than the League Cup.

There’s the history. There’s Wembley. And there’s also a reward beyond the trophy.

The FA Cup winner earns a place in the following season’s UEFA Europa League, unless the club has already qualified for a higher European competition through its league position.

We’ll explain exactly what that means when we get to European football.

For now, just remember:

The FA Cup still matters.

For me, the FA Cup always felt different.

Growing up in England, I couldn’t watch Premier League football every week, but the FA Cup was on terrestrial TV. A big cup weekend felt like an event.

Saturday would start with Football Focus. I’d follow the scores through Ceefax and later watch them come through on the BBC’s vidiprinter on GrandStand. Saturday night meant Match of the Day, presented by Des Lynam with pundits such as Liverpool greats Alan Hansen and, later, Mark Lawrenson.

There were no instant scores and highlights on your phone. Sometimes you saw the result first and waited until that night to finally see the goals.

That made a live FA Cup tie feel special.

I particularly loved January, when the bigger clubs entered and an upset suddenly felt possible.

Wrexham beating Arsenal 2-1 in 1992 is a classic example. Five years later, Wrexham drew 1-1 with Premier League side West Ham before going to Upton Park and winning the replay 1-0.

That was the magic of the FA Cup.

For one afternoon, a lower-league club could face one of England’s biggest names and somehow the gap between them didn’t seem quite so big.

For a kid following the scores on Ceefax, watching the FA Cup on terrestrial TV and ending the day with Match of the Day, football Saturdays felt like an event.

Then England decided one domestic cup wasn’t enough.

The League Cup began in the 1960/61 season. Its official name today is the EFL Cup, and you’ll often hear Carabao Cup because of its current sponsorship.

Older fans will generally just call it the League Cup.

Unlike the FA Cup, this competition doesn’t reach into non-league football. It’s contested by the 92 professional clubs in England’s top four divisions: the Premier League, Championship, League One and League Two.

Lower division clubs enter first.

Premier League teams that aren’t competing in Europe normally enter in the Second Round. Those playing in the Champions League, Europa League or Conference League join in the Third Round.

Most rounds are single-match knockouts.

Lose and you’re out.

The semi-finals are different. They’re played over two legs, meaning the teams play twice, once at each club’s stadium. The winners then meet at Wembley for the final.

This is where the League Cup teaches you something important about English football:

Not every competition is treated equally.

A club like Liverpool, Arsenal or Manchester City could be competing in the Premier League, Champions League, FA Cup and League Cup during the same season.

That’s a lot of games.

So when an early League Cup match falls between important Premier League and European fixtures, managers have to choose their priorities.

That’s when you’ll hear:

“He’s rotated the squad.”

It simply means the manager has rested some regular starters and brought in backup players, younger prospects or players who need more minutes.

Sometimes the League Cup lineup barely resembles the Premier League team you watched a few days earlier.

For the biggest Premier League clubs, yes.

Especially in the early rounds.

The Premier League and Champions League generally come first, while the FA Cup carries more history and domestic prestige.

That can leave the League Cup somewhere underneath them.

But something changes as the competition progresses.

Get through the early rounds and suddenly you’re in a quarter-final.

Win that and you’re in a semi-final.

Now you’re only one tie away from a Wembley final

And those star players sitting on the bench earlier in the competition?

They have a habit of coming back.

Because whatever clubs say about priorities, winning trophies still matters.

There’s one more domestic trophy before the Premier League season begins.

The FA Community Shield is the traditional curtain-raiser for the new English season.

It’s one match between the previous season’s Premier League champions and FA Cup winners, traditionally played at Wembley shortly before the league begins.

Winning both the Premier League and FA Cup is called the Double.

Obviously, the team can’t play itself.

So when one club wins both, the Premier League runners-up take the other place in the Community Shield.

It’s officially a trophy, and nobody turns down the chance to start the season by lifting a trophy. But in terms of importance, it’s nowhere near the Premier League or FA Cup.

Think of it as the opening act.

One afternoon before the league season begins.

Wait... This Isn’t a Premier League Game?

Your team played in the Premier League on Saturday, so why are they playing again on Wednesday in a completely different competition?

Next, we’ll explain the Champions League and the other European competitions, how they fit alongside the Premier League and why they matter.