The Liga 2, most commonly spelled as Liga II, is the second level of the Romanian football league system. The league changed its name from Divizia B just before the start of the 2006–07 football season. It is currently sponsored by Casa Pariurilor, a betting company under the official name Liga 2 Casa Pariurilor.[1]
Since its inception in 1934, Liga II has had between 2 and 9 parallel divisions, with clubs divided based on geographic regions. But since the 2016-17 Liga II, it changed to one group of 20 teams. Currently, the top six teams goes in the promotion play-off, in which the top 2 teams get promoted and the next 2 play a promotion play-off against teams from Liga I. In the play-out, there are 2 groups, 7th, 10th, 11th, etc. in group 1, 8th, 9th, 12th, etc. in group 2. the bottom 2 teams from each group gets relegated and the 3rd worst places in the 2 groups play each other home and away to decide the last team relegated.
On 14 July 2023, the federation announced that the league will be expanded to 22 teams starting with the 2024-2025 season.[2]
The expansion will be achieved by having only 4 teams relegate at the end of the 2023-24 Liga II season ( by giving up on the extra relegation match-up between the second to last teams in the play-out groups ), and having 6 teams promote from Liga III ( 5 play-off winners plus a sixth team to be determined by extra matches between the best 4 teams that lost in the final round of the Liga III play-off ).
The new format will be similar to the current one, with teams playing each other once in the regular season ( for a total of 21 match days this time ), followed by a promotion play-off with 6 teams, playing each other twice, and a relegation play-out with two groups of 8 teams playing each other once ( as opposed to the current play-out format with groups of 7 also playing each other once ).
On the promotion end, the format will be the same as currently, with the top two teams from the play-off promoting directly and next two playing an extra promotion play-off against teams from Liga I.
Teams promoted are shown in bold or in "Other teams promoted" column.[3][4]
194 titles were awarded for winning the Liga II championship.
86 teams won the Liga II championship.