Scottish football league system

The Scottish football league system is a series of generally unconnected leagues for Scottish football clubs. The Scottish system is more complicated than many other national league systems, consisting of several completely separate systems or 'grades' of leagues and clubs, with Senior football, Junior football, and beneath these Amateur and Welfare football.

In senior football in Scotland there is one national league, the Scottish Professional Football League, which has four divisions. There are also several regional leagues (most notably the Highland Football League and since 2013 the Lowland Football League). From 2014–15, regular promotion or relegation between the two regional leagues and the SPFL national league was introduced for the first time.

Rangers are the current record holders with 54 titles. One senior club based in England (Berwick Rangers) plays in the Scottish system in the Scottish League Two. A small number of English amateur clubs in the lowest levels of the game, based on or around the Anglo-Scottish border, also compete in the Scottish system for geographical and travel reasons.

As of 2014–15 there were a total of 925 teams playing in the Saturday regular season structure.

Overall, the structure of men's football in Scotland is among the most fractured and multi-faceted in Europe, being unique in having a plurality of adult male governing bodies (with Seniors, Juniors, Amateurs and Welfarers - see below). It is not uncommon for a given town or county to have clubs in as many as three or four separate systems.

Until recently Scottish football had no pyramid league system, and as a result it was near impossible for clubs at the bottom of the system to progress to the top, or for weak clubs to be relegated down the leagues. Progress towards creating a pyramid system began in 2008 under the tenure of Scottish Football Association (SFA) chief executive Gordon Smith, with discussions between the SFA and the regional and junior leagues, and on 7 May 2013 Scottish Premier League clubs unanimously agreed on the introduction of a pyramid structure to Scottish football along with the reintroduction of a single governing body for all 42 senior clubs, a revised financial distribution model, and the possibility of a promotion/relegation play-off between the top two divisions.

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