The contracts were finalized and teams were formed as early as October last year to get the ball rolling in the I-League. But the uncertainty surrounding the Indian Super League had a trickle-down effect. From October, the competition was pushed back to November before being suspended indefinitely.
Time and again, the I-League has been given the ‘lil bro’ treatment by its own federation, the All India Football Federation (AIFF), and the ISL. In the past decade alone, the league lost its top division status, its legacy teams and star players to the ISL.
With an aim to hold on, the I-League owners have come together to give a makeover to the second division league, which returns on February 27.
The league will be renamed the Indian Football League, while also undergoing a new ownership model with participating clubs owning a 60 percent stake. The upcoming new commercial partner for the league will own 30 percent, with the Federation owning the remaining 10 percent.
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“There was negativity around the I-League, so we wanted to usher in a new era,” said Real Kashmir FC owner Arshad Shawl on the decision to rename the league.
«We wanted to give it shape and structure. This is a league that has been around for many years, this is the league that created club culture in India. Considering the problems we have been facing in Indian football recently, we wanted to give it a professional look.»
“We had asked for a model last year itself that is similar to the way the English clubs run the league,” said VC Praveen, the owner of Gokulam Kerala. “Since everything always happens at the last minute for us, we said if you don’t have time, we will do it this way. The AIFF president was very candid about it.
He said it sounds good. When we also spoke to Mr Satyanarayan (AIFF Deputy General Secretary), he felt that this would ease things up and also give more confidence to the other clubs.”
An I-League Board of Directors was formed to oversee matters relating to the league for this season. The five-member council consists of Gokulam Kerala, Real Kashmir, Rajasthan United FC, Diamond Harbor FC and Shillong Lajong – with representatives from each zone.
The clubs have proposed introducing a 20-year plan that will help the league leave the struggles of the I-League days behind and embrace a more self-reliant, professional format.
Fight title: The coming season will miss the legacy of Churchill Brothers – last year’s provisional champions who lost a Court of Arbitration hearing and had to cede the title and promotion to Inter Kashi (in photo). Churchill will instead continue his battle in court after taking the case against the AIFF to the Delhi High Court. | Photo credits: AIFF Media
Fight title: The coming season will miss the legacy of Churchill Brothers – last year’s provisional champions who lost a Court of Arbitration hearing and had to cede the title and promotion to Inter Kashi (in photo). Churchill will instead continue his battle in court after taking the case against the AIFF to the Delhi High Court. | Photo credits: AIFF Media
«What we are trying to do is deliver the league in the best possible way. We are trying to scale up our entire ground preparation, improve the hygiene and quality of the grounds, the quality of production and broadcasting, commentary and compliance. We are trying to scale up and make a leap in terms of how the Indian Football League should be viewed immediately after the season,» said Arshad.
The total expenditure for the 2025-26 season has been pegged at Rs 12 crore, with each club expected to invest close to Rs 60 lakh to make up the 60 per cent (Rs 8 crore). But as there is no development yet in acquiring a commercial partner for the league, the Federation is expected to fund the remaining 40 percent (Rs 4 crore) to kick off the league.
The 10 participating teams are Dempo SC, Gokulam Kerala, Real Kashmir, Diamond Harbour, Namdhari FC, Shillong Lajong, Rajasthan United, Sreenidi Deccan, Aizawl FC and Chanmari FC. The competition will miss the legacy of Churchill Brothers – last year’s provisional champions who lost a hearing at the Court of Arbitration and had to cede the title and promotion to Inter Kashi. Churchill will instead continue his battle in court after taking the case against the AIFF to the Delhi High Court.
Due to the delayed start, the competition will return to the format it was in in post-Covid times between 2020 and 2022. The ten teams will play a one-leg round-robin stage before the top six teams qualify for the championship round to compete for the title, while the bottom four teams receive a scrap to avoid relegation. The winner of the I-League will earn promotion to the ISL, but the relegation spots have been reduced from two to one.
Usual suspects Gokulam Kerala, Real Kashmir, Rajasthan United, Dempo and Sreenidi Deccan will aim to make the most of this truncated season to win the championship and earn the coveted move to the ISL.
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Newly promoted Diamond Harbour, which has made strong investments with the likes of Bright Enobhakare and Luka Majcen, will look to continue its meteoric rise and disrupt the incumbents. Aizawl, Chanmari and Shillong Lajong, which have not made any foreign purchases, will find it difficult to stay afloat.
Arshad is confident that the clubs’ self-financing approach will benefit Indian football.
«They’ve all taken on this soulless responsibility of saying, ‘We can’t kill football. We can’t kill the passion of 1.4 billion people.’ So they said we would cut ourselves to the bone and come finance it.
“Previously, some club owners, both in the ISL and I-League, did not have the balance sheet to support this. That led to an almost systematic collapse of marketing rights, media rights and sponsorship value at central and grassroots levels.
«So now, once there is seriousness from both the ISL and I-League club owners to come in and, with our own money, make the league much better and bigger, then we will attract investments,» said an optimistic Arshad.
Published on February 26, 2026
