The 2025 Allianz Hurling League will see a change in format, with five divisions of seven teams, and places determined by final league standings in 2024.
The announcement was made at the launch of the 2024 master fixture plan in Croke Park today.
With the split-season in place – only a motion brought forward to Congress can alter that – many of the changes confirmed for next year were relatively minor tweaks.
The change in the hurling league is among those. Moving away from the current system of two six-team groups of approximate strength in Division 1, a tiered system will be introduced in 2025.
There will be five seven-team groups, starting at the top in 1A, then 1B before working down to 2, 3 and 4, with the top two in each division meeting in a league final.
Two from each division, aside from 4, will be relegated, with each side afforded three home and away games.
With an uneven number of teams in each division, one county will not have a game during each round of fixtures.
The GAA published its master fixtures schedule for 2024 at Croke Park earlier today. pic.twitter.com/5oAak8kVQT
— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) December 6, 2023
The final tables in 2024 will determine a county's starting league position 12 months later. The top three sides in 1A and 1B, plus the fourth-placed team with the best record, will make up 1A in 2025.
Speaking at the launch in Croke Park, Central Competitions Control Committee Chairperson Derek Kent outlined that the split season brought its own restrictions.
The All-Ireland club finals will remain in January, while the 2024 football championship will again begin a week after the league finals. Last year Mayo bowed out of the Connacht championship six days after defeat Galway in the Division 1 football final in Croke Park.
Next year, Mayo are again in action a week after the league finals weekend, travelling away to New York with Galway travelling to London. They are among 18 counties competing on the opening weekend of the football championship.
A proposal to add a week to the inter-county calendar by extending the date for the All-Ireland football final to the first weekend in August received just 32% of the votes at a Central Council meeting in September.
"There are only two weekends that are free," Kent explained. "There is GAA activity every weekend and the club players have a decisive calendar."
The GAA has previously stated its ambition to get the All-Ireland club championship run off in the same calendar year, but GAA Games Administration manager Bernard Smith said this isn’t feasible at present.
"Not at the moment, not with the extension of the inter-county programme," he said. "That was always a long-term goal of the association, but I think we are in a good place. It’s finished now before the start of the national league. That’s as tight as we can get it.
"The biggest problem we have is the dual counties, who need 14, 16 weeks for their games programme."
The football league gets underway on the fourth weekend of January – a Saturday evening double-bill in Division 1 will see a repeat of this year’s All-Ireland semi-finals when Derry travel to Tralee and All-Ireland champions Dublin hosting Monaghan in Croke Park - a week before the hurling action begins.
It will make for a busy schedule ahead of the respective finals weekends (football 30/31 March, hurling 6/7 April), with three 'double’ weekends featuring full rounds of fixtures in both codes.
While the 2023 league campaigns saw just one fixture postponed – and that was pushed out from Saturday to Sunday – there remains the possibility that weather could have a serious impact on the competitions.
The football league has two free weekends within the group stage, while hurling has three.
With the SFC starting the weekend following the league finals - hurling enjoys a two-week break until the provincial round-robin series - football is at a greater risk should postponements come into play.
In the event of a failure to complete the full seven rounds of the league by the 30/31 March (finals weekend), league positioning at the end of the last full round of fixtures played in that division will be used to decide final league positioning, which in turn is used to determine All-Ireland and Tailteann Cup qualification.
