Non-League football

Non-League football describes football leagues played outside the top leagues of a country. Usually, it describes leagues which are not fully professional. The term is primarily used for football in England, where it is specifically used to describe all football played at levels below those of the Premier League (20 clubs) and the three divisions of the English Football League (EFL; 72 clubs). Currently, a non-League team would be any club playing in the National League or below that level. Typically, non-League clubs are either semi-professional or amateur in status, although the majority of clubs in the National League division (level 5) are fully professional, some of which are former EFL clubs who have suffered relegation.

The term non-League was commonly used in England long before the creation of the Premier League in 1992, prior to which the top football clubs in England all belonged to The Football League (from 2016, the EFL); at this time, the Football League was commonly referred to as simply "the League" and its clubs were "League clubs", so all clubs which were not members of the Football League were therefore 'non-League' clubs. Since 1992, the term "non-League" has come to mean clubs at a lower level than the Football League, as the original definition of being outside the Football League would include Premier League clubs.