Teams
CD Coopsol
Unión Huaral
CD Los Chankas
Juan Aurich
Santos FC
Comerciantes Unidos
Pirata FC
Cienciano
Deportivo Llacuabamba
Sport Loreto
Los Caimanes FC
Sport Victoria
Atletico Grau
Carlos Manucci
Alianza Atletico
Alianza Universidad
Willy Serrato
Cesar Vallejo
Alfredo Salinas FC
FC Carlos Stein
Sport Chavelines Juniors
Unión Comercio
Deportivo Hualgayoc
Alfonso Ugarte de Puno
CD Universidad de San Martín
Sport Boys
Comerciantes FC
Ayacucho FC
Sport Ancash
Defensor La Bocana
Cusco FC
Academia Deportiva Cantolao
Deportivo Municipal
UCV Moquegua
Deportivo Binacional
Club Ada Jaen
FC San Marcos
Atletico Torino
Juan Pablo II College
Wikipedia - Peruvian Segunda División
The Peruvian Second Division (Peruvian Segunda División in Spanish), officially known as the Liga 2 (Ligue 2) of Peru is the second-highest division in the Peruvian football league system. It is a professional and promotional division organized by the Peruvian Football Federation. The winners and Ligiulla winners get promoted to the Peruvian Primera División. The bottom two teams get relegated to the Copa Perú, which will be later changed to relegation to the Peruvian Tercera División. After years of changing numbers of clubs, as of 2024 the league includes 18 clubs.
History
Before the current Liga 2, there was the Peruvian Segunda División, which was the second division of Peruvian football from 1912 to 1925. It allowed promotion to the Peruvian Primera Division for the starting seasons. It was not a professional tournament. In the inaugural 1912 season, the Peruvian Segunda Division and Primera Division were put together with 8 teams each. It was dissolved in 1925 after the Peruvian Football Federation was formed. The tournament was restarted in 1926, under the organization of the Peruvian Football Federation, with the name of "Intermediate Tournament", the first champion was Association Alianza, after that in 1935 the championship was renamed "Ascenso División de Honor" where it granted promotion to teams from Lima and Callao, at this stage the most relevant was the championship of 1939 where Alianza Lima won the championship and climbed to the top division. It would later be replaced by the Peruvian Segunda Division, now known as the Liga 2, in 1936. Despite being founded in 1936, the Peruvian Segunda Division did not have its first season up until 1943, where Atlético Telmo Carbajo of Callao won the tournament.
For decades after it was first formed in 1936, only clubs from the Department of Lima participated in the annual tournament where the winner gets promoted to the Copa Perú. From 1988 to 1990, the winner got promoted to the Torneo Metropolitano Regional. It was not until 1992 when Peruvian football federation expanded the tournament to other regions, expanding it to the Department of Ica and Callao with a total of 12 teams.
From 1993 to 1997 the winner was promoted directly to the Primera División. From 1998 it was established that the champion of this tournament would play a revalidation match with the team that finished second to last in the decentralized championship of the same year. In 2002, following the Peruvian Football Federation's policy of increasing the number of teams in the first division, the champion of this tournament was immediately promoted. In 2004 and 2005 the format changed, establishing that the champion and runner-up of the second division would be integrated into Region 4 of the Copa Perú.
In 2006, the Peruvian Segunda Division was moved up to the second tier once again, where the winner gets promotion to the First Division. As a result, the Copa Peru was moved down to the third tier, where is currently stands.It was only in 2006 that it was decided to decentralize this tournament (until then reserved for teams from the Department of Lima and the Constitutional Province of Callao), the championship began to be played with teams from different departments of Peru that obtained the category through a contest called by the Peruvian Football Federation or by relegation from the first division. However, despite the decentralist spirit of this measure (which recently turned this category into a true Peruvian Second Division), some articles were established in the regulations that obliged teams of a certain distance from Lima to pay the tickets of rival teams. It should be said that with this, the duality of promotion to the First Division occurred because the Copa Perú, the traditional amateur football tournament, was also of a national nature, a situation that does not happen in any country worldwide and where it was seen that the Second Division should remain as the only way to promotion to the First Division. However, while it was nominally Second Professional, it was officially promotional.
In 2013, the tournament was expanded from 12 to 14 teams as a plan to make it more competitive. In the same decade, many current giants of Peru such as Sport Boys, Universidad César Vallejo and others obtained promotion to the Liga 1, where some still stand to this day. Multiple other expansions and reductions of teams were made and the league was originally set to be 16 teams but reduced to 14 because of financial issues.
In 2019, the Peruvian Football Federation announced the creation of the Peruvian Tercera División, which will replace the Copa Peru as the third tier, moving the Copa Peru down to the fourth tier. This had the relegated teams of the Liga 2 move down to the Liga 3. Liga 2 teams also participate in the national tournament, the Copa Bicentenario along with the teams from the Liga 1. For the 2024 season, the Liga 2 was expanded to 18 teams, the same as the Liga 1. A new format was made which would split the 18 teams into two groups known as the Zona Norte and Zona Sur, based on the northern and southern locations of the clubs. The top six teams in each group would advance to the group stage, with the other three being placed in the relegation group. Two teams will be promoted to the First Division and two relegated to the newly created Third Division.