The Copa Uruguay (officially Copa AUF Uruguay) is a knockout football competition in men's domestic Uruguayan

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

, starting in 2022. The competition starts in August, with the winner of the cup qualifying for the following year's

Copa Libertadores The CONMEBOL Libertadores, also known as Copa Libertadores de América (), is an annual continental club football competition organized by CONMEBOL since 1960. It is the highest level of competition in South American club football. The tournam ...

, starting from the 2025 edition. It is also planned to grant the winner a spot in the

Supercopa Uruguaya The Supercopa Uruguaya (''Uruguayan Supercup'') is an annual one-match football official competition in Uruguay organised by the Uruguayan Football Association (AUF) which is played between the Primera División champions and the Torneo Intermedio ...

in the future.

History

Historically, Uruguayan football never had a national cup tournament, aside from a competition called ''Torneo de Copa'', which happened only in 1969. In 2018, teams started to mobilize in favour of the creation of a national cup, but nothing came of it. On 20 April 2022, the

Uruguayan Football Association The Uruguayan Football Association ( — ) is the governing body of association football, football in Uruguay. It was founded in 1900, as The Uruguayan Association Football League, and affiliated to FIFA in 1923. It is a founding member of CONMEB ...

announced the creation of the ''Copa AUF Uruguay'', being approved by several clubs involved. The first edition of the competition, which was played from 22 June to 13 November 2022, was won by

Defensor Sporting Defensor Sporting Club is a sports club based in Montevideo, Uruguay. Founded in 1913, Defensor has several sports sections, with football and basketball being the most important and the ones in which the club has achieved significant achievement ...

who defeated

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in the final. Defensor Sporting also won the following two editions in

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and

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Format

For its first edition in

2022 The year began with another wave in the COVID-19 pandemic, with SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant, Omicron spreading rapidly and becoming the dominant variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus worldwide. Tracking a decrease in cases and deaths, 2022 saw ...

, the competition was divided into two stages: a preliminary stage and the national stage. In the preliminary stage, teams from the amateur lower leagues competed for 20 berths to the national stage. In the first phase of the national stage, 24 teams from the Primera División Amateur and

Segunda División The Campeonato Nacional de Liga de Segunda División, commonly known as Segunda División or La Liga 2, and officially known as LaLiga HyperMotion for sponsorship reasons, is the men's second professional association football division of the Spa ...

entered the competition, for a total of 48 teams which were divided into 24 ties, with the winners qualifying for the second round. The 24 second round winners then advanced to play against each other to define 12 winners into the third phase. 32 teams played in the third phase: 12 winners from the previous phase, 16 professional teams from the Primera División, the best relegated team of Primera División the previous season, the defending champion of the Primera División Amateur and the defending champion and runner-up of the ''Copa Nacional de Clubes''. From this point onwards, the winners played against each other in two-legged knockout phases, with the final being played as a single match on neutral ground. Due to financial and scheduling constraints, starting from

the number of participating teams was reduced to 32, with 10 Primera División, 6 Segunda División, 4 from Primera División Amateur, 2 from Divisional D, and 10 clubs from the Copa Nacional de Clubes (nine of which qualified after a preliminary competition) entering the cup. The 32 teams played a single-legged knockout tournament with the semi-finals and the final played on neutral ground. The winner of the competition is also awarded a

US$ The United States dollar (Currency symbol, symbol: Dollar sign, $; ISO 4217, currency code: USD) is the official currency of the United States and International use of the U.S. dollar, several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introdu ...

100,000 prize.

Results

Performance by club

References

{{National football Cups (CONMEBOL region) National association football cups Football in Uruguay