The 2021 season of the Central League fixtures revealed
The new season of the Central League will be based on a tournament system and will be divided into four stages to be decided through 34 rounds of double round robin (10 rounds + 8 rounds + 8 rounds + 8 rounds).
In the initial phase, clubs affiliated with member associations in the three host cities (Chengdu Rongcheng, Meizhou Hakka, and Wuhan Three Towns) will serve as hosts. The three seeded teams will be drawn by lot to determine where to land in Groups A, B and C. The remaining 15 teams will be serpentine based on the 2020 league standings and will be directly assigned to Groups A, B and C. Six teams in each group play a double round-robin of 10 rounds of 90 matches in the same division.
In the following stages 2 through 4, teams will rotate based on the results of the first stage. Within each phase, three groups of teams will compete in a double round robin (no more games will be played within the same group in phase 1). Eight rounds of matches will be played in each phase, totaling 72 matches.
The promotion quota for this season's Central League is set at 2+0.5+0.5, meaning that the top two finishers will be promoted directly, while the third and fourth place finishers will play a play-off against the last two finishers from the Chinese Super League, thus completing the expansion of the Chinese Super League for the 2022 season.
