Copa Sudamericana 2026 (M)

The Sudamericana was born in 2002, gathering the remains of four tournaments that had run out of room: the Copa CONMEBOL, the Supercopa Sudamericana, the Copa Mercosur and the Copa Merconorte. Four competitions melted into one to tidy up a calendar that had become ungovernable.

And the result, twenty-four editions on, is an honour roll no other major cup can show: six clubs tied at the top on two titles each — Boca Juniors, Independiente, Athletico Paranaense, Independiente del Valle, Liga de Quito and Lanús — and absolutely nobody on three. Every other champion has won it exactly once.

That list of one-time winners is what explains the tournament's character: Cienciano of Cusco in 2003, Arsenal de Sarandí in 2007, Universidad de Chile in 2011, Santa Fe in 2015, Racing in 2024. Clubs that won a continental cup and went back to their own size the following year, with the trophy cabinet changed forever.

The 2025 final was played on 22 November at the Defensores del Chaco in Asunción, in front of 44,164 people, and it did not produce a single goal. Lanús and Atlético Mineiro drew nil-nil across ninety minutes and drew nil-nil again in extra time. It was settled on penalties, 5-4.

The man of the match was neither a forward nor a midfielder: it was Nahuel Losada, the Lanús goalkeeper, who held his team up for a hundred and twenty minutes and finished the job in the shoot-out. Some finals are won by scoring and some by not conceding, and this was the second kind from beginning to end.

It was Lanús's second title, twelve years after the first, and they took it off an opponent of incomparable financial size. It is the tournament summed up in one match: here a well-played night is worth more than a budget.

The 2026 draw has a quirk best understood by looking at the other cup: River Plate and Racing, two of Argentina's biggest clubs, do not appear in this year's Libertadores and do appear here. And they do not come alone.

From the Brazilian side come São Paulo, Grêmio, Botafogo, Vasco da Gama, Santos, Atlético-MG and Red Bull Bragantino: seven clubs from a country that usually monopolises the senior cup. From the Argentine side, alongside River and Racing, there are San Lorenzo, Tigre, Barracas Central and Deportivo Riestra.

That is the strange balance that holds the Sudamericana up. It is the continent's second competition by rank, but every year it collects giants who did not make the first, and mixes them with Macará, Palestino, Boston River and Deportivo Recoleta. The distance between the richest and the humblest side in the draw is not matched by any other cup in the world.

Thirty-two teams play the group stage, and the eight group winners go straight through to the last sixteen. But the last sixteen holds sixteen teams, not eight, and there lies the piece that sets this cup apart: a preliminary round hands out the other eight places.

Sixteen teams meet in that play-off, and only half of them come from the Sudamericana itself — the eight group runners-up. The other half drop down from the Copa Libertadores: those who finish third in their groups do not go home, they land here. It is an unusual mechanism, because it means half the bracket is decided in a different tournament played at the same time.

From the last sixteen onwards everything is two-legged until the single final on 28 November. And what the champion takes home has two parts: they play the Recopa Sudamericana against the Libertadores winner, and the following year they enter that Libertadores directly at the group stage — no qualifying rounds, which for a mid-sized club is the difference between dreaming and qualifying.