How does the Leagues Cup work? Format, teams playing in 2025 MLS vs. Liga MX tournament

With the Leagues Cup now in its third full edition, the tournament has already grown and evolved into something very different than it was at the outset.

The tournament, a midseason collaboration between Major League Soccer and Liga MX, began in 2023 as Lionel Messi led Inter Miami to their first-ever trophy in his very first competition with the club.

However, as the 2025 competition heats up, the format looks nothing like it did in that first full year, receiving an overhaul for this year’s tournament. Thanks to early MLS dominance and repeated Liga MX complaints about how the U.S.-hosted tournament is stacked against them, there has been a reshuffle to how it plays out.

The Sporting News looks over how the competition will work from 2025 and beyond, and which clubs have been drawn together in this year’s event.

MORE: Full overview of 2025 Leagues Cup bracket, schedule, results, and matchups

How does the Leagues Cup work? Format for 2025

The Leagues Cup completely reworked its format for the 2025 competition. In the past, the competition was structured as a group stage with three-team groups and a massive 32-team knockout bracket. That set-up has been scrapped for a model that more closely reflects the new UEFA Champions League structure.

In 2025, the Leagues Cup begins with a League Phase that sees the clubs split into two tables, one for MLS clubs and one for Liga MX. To set the League Phase matchups, teams from both nations were broken down into East and West and sorted by a combined ranking based on last season’s league standing, and then divided into three tiers.

After that, six six-team groups, officially known as “sets,” were drawn to include two teams from each competitive tier, one from MLS and one from Liga MX. Teams in each set play the three clubs in their set from the opposite league.

As was the case in previous Leagues Cup tournaments, matches that end in a draw advance to a penalty shootout. Teams will get three points for a regulation win, two points for a penalty shootout win, and one point for a draw that results in a penalty shootout loss.

To qualify for the knockout stage, a club must finish top four in their League Phase standing from their league. Thus, four MLS and four Liga MX teams will qualify for the knockout stage. From there, the eight clubs will contest a bracket-style knockout stage with intra-league matchups in the quarterfinals. There is a third-place playoff, as the top three finishers qualify for next season’s CONCACAF Champions Cup.

Leagues Cup 2025 draw

League Phase

All clubs listed in order of their ranking in the overall combined table.

East 1

East 2

East 3

West 1

West 2

West 3

Knockout Phase

To determine the knockout phase matchups, the four MLS qualifiers will match up against the opposite qualifier from Liga MX.

For example, the first-place finisher in the MLS table will face the fourth-place finisher in the Liga MX table, and so-on.