2024–25 FA Cup

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FA Cup 2024–25
Region	England Wales Guernsey
Dates	2 November 2024–17 May 2025
Number of teams	745 (all) 653 (qualifying competition) 124 (main competition incl. 32 qualifiers)
← 2023–24	2025–26 →

The 2024–25 FA Cup is the 144th season of the Football Association Challenge Cup, the oldest football tournament in the world. It is sponsored by Emirates and known as the Emirates FA Cup for sponsorship purposes. The FA Cup is the main domestic cup competition for men's football teams in England.

The qualifying competition will begin on 3 August 2024, with the tournament proper starting on 2 November 2024. The final will be played at Wembley Stadium, London, on 17 May 2025.

Teams

The FA Cup is a knockout competition with 124 teams taking part from the first round proper, and all trying to reach the final at Wembley Stadium on 25 May 2024. The competition consists of the 92 teams from the Football League system (20 teams from the Premier League and the 72 in total from the EFL Championship, EFL League One and EFL League Two) plus the 32 surviving teams out of 653 teams from the National League System that will start the competition in the qualifying rounds. The total 745 entrants was an increase on 13 from the previous season, and the most since 758 entrants were accepted in 2012–13.

All rounds will be drawn randomly, usually either at the completion of the previous round discounting any replays or on the evening of the last televised game of a round being played, depending on television broadcasting rights.

Round	Main date	Number of fixtures	Clubs remaining	New entries this round	Winner prize money	Loser prize money	Divisions entering this round
First round	Saturday 2 November 2024	40	124 → 84	48		None	24 EFL League One teams 24 EFL League Two teams
Second round	Saturday 30 November 2024	20	84 → 64	None		None	None
Third round	Saturday 11 January 2025	32	64 → 32	44		None	20 Premier League teams 24 EFL Championship teams
Fourth round	Saturday 8 February 2025	16	32 → 16	None		None	None
Fifth round	Saturday 1 March 2025	8	16 → 8	None		None	None
Quarter-finals	Saturday 29 March 2025	4	8 → 4	None		None	None
Semi-finals	Saturday 26 April 2025	2	4 → 2	None			None
Final	Saturday 17 May 2025	1	2 → 1	None			None

Qualifying

Main article: 2024–25 FA Cup qualifying rounds

Teams that are not members of either the Premier League or English Football League will compete in the qualifying rounds to secure one of 32 available places in the first round. The six-round qualifying competition will began with the extra preliminary round on 3 August 2024.

Rule changes

This is the first edition of the tournament to be played without replays in the non-qualifying rounds and the final played one week before the end of the Premier League season. The changes were made as part of a six-year agreement between the Football Association and the Premier League due to pressure on the domestic calendar from expanded UEFA competitions, but were criticised since replays were cited as an important source of revenue for lower league clubs. The agreement saw all round dates return to weekends, with previous editions having had some dates in midweek.

Television rights

Both BBC Sport and ITV Sport air FA Cup matches until the 2025–26 season.

Broadcaster	Summary
BBC Sport	18 live matches per season, with highlights of the FA Community Shield. BBC Sport has second and third picks of matches in the second round, fourth round and the quarter-finals, as well as first and fourth pick of matches in the first, third and fifth rounds, and first pick of the semi-finals.
ITV Sport	At least 20 live matches per season, plus live coverage of the FA Community Shield. ITV has first pick and fourth pick of matches in the second round, fourth round and the quarter-finals, as well as second and third picks for the first, third and fifth rounds and second pick of the semi-finals.

External links

• BBC Sport