The format for the new FAI National League has been confirmed, with the competition beginning in August of this year.<\/p>\n
The inaugural edition will be run on a truncated basis.<\/p>\n
Fifteen clubs will take part in three groups of five, with teams playing each other both home and away. The three winners of the groups will advance to the semi-finals, with the last place going to the best performing runner-up.<\/p>\n
From spring of next year, the competition will be fully formatted, with the chance for promotion into the First Division for the 2028 season.<\/p>\n
Fixtures for the 2026 season will be confirmed in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n
FAI National League Group 1
Bonagee United (Donegal)
Cockhill Celtic (Donegal)
Home Farm DCU (Dublin)
Lucan United (Dublin)
Mervue United (Galway)<\/p>\n
FAI National League Group 2
Letterkenny Rovers (Donegal)
Mayo FC (Mayo)
Salthill Devon (Galway)
St. Francis (Dublin)
TUD (Dublin)<\/p>\n
FAI National League Group 3
CK United (Carlow\/Kilkenny)
Killarney Celtic (Kerry)
Newbridge Town (Kildare)
UCC (Cork)
Villa FC (Waterford)<\/p>\n
Listen to the RT\u00c9 Soccer podcast on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n Watch the Women’s Champions League final, Barcelona v Lyon, on Saturday from 4.30pm on RT\u00c92 and RT\u00c9 Player<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The format for the new FAI National League has been confirmed, with the competition beginning in August of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":458470,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-458469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/458470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}