The 2024 Categoría Primera A season (officially known as the 2024 Liga BetPlay Dimayor season for sponsorship purposes) is the 77th season of the

Categoría Primera A The Categoría Primera A (), commonly referred to as Liga BetPlay Dimayor (between 2015 and 2019 ''Liga Águila'') due to sponsorship by online betting company BetPlay, is a Colombian professional league for association football clubs. It is the ...

, Colombia's top-flight football league. The season began on 19 January 2024. Two tournaments (Apertura and Finalización) will be played in the season, each one of them being an independent championship. Junior are the defending champions, having won the 2023 Finalización tournament.

Format changes

The competition format for this season was approved by the Extraordinary Assembly of DIMAYOR on 12 December 2023, which decided to keep the same system used in the previous seasons, with two tournaments (Apertura and Finalización) of three stages each: a first stage in which the 20 teams play each other once (with the fixtures being reversed for the Finalización tournament), a semi-final stage (''cuadrangulares'') played by the top eight teams from the previous stage and a double-legged final series. The Assembly also decided to remove the regional derbies round that is usually played halfway into the first stage of each tournament as well as a change to the distribution of international berths, with all four

Copa Libertadores The CONMEBOL Libertadores, also known as the Copa Libertadores de América ( pt, Copa Libertadores da América), is an annual international club football competition organized by CONMEBOL since 1960. It is the highest level of competition in S ...

berths being awarded through league performance (two to the champions of both tournaments and the remaining two to the best-placed teams in the aggregate table), instead of one of those being awarded to the Copa Colombia champion, which will now qualify for the

Copa Sudamericana The CONMEBOL Sudamericana, named as ''Copa Sudamericana'' (; pt, Copa Sul-Americana ), is an annual international club football competition organized by CONMEBOL since 2002. It is the second-most prestigious club competition in South American ...

instead.

Teams

20 teams take part in the season, the top 18 teams in the relegation table of the previous season as well as the 2023 Primera B champions Patriotas and runners-up

Fortaleza Fortaleza (, locally , Portuguese for ''Fortress'') is the state capital of Ceará, located in Northeastern Brazil. It belongs to the Metropolitan mesoregion of Fortaleza and microregion of Fortaleza. It is Brazil's 5th largest city and the t ...

. Fortaleza were the first team to earn promotion, after defeating Cúcuta Deportivo in the 2023 Primera B's ''Torneo II'' final on 17 November 2023 and securing the top spot in the season's aggregate table, thus returning to the top flight after eight years, whilst Patriotas clinched promotion back to the top flight after one season on 28 November 2023 by beating Fortaleza in the Primera B's Grand Final. The promoted teams replaced

Unión Magdalena Unión Magdalena () commonly known as El Unión, and nicknamed as El Ciclón Bananero (The Banana Cyclone) and also Los Samarios (The Samarios), is a Colombian football club from the city of Santa Marta, capital of the department of Magdalena, ...

and

Atlético Huila Atlético Huila is a professional Colombian football team based in Neiva, that currently plays in the Categoría Primera B. The club was founded on November 29, 1990, making it one of the youngest professional football clubs in Colombia. The club' ...

, the bottom two teams in the relegation table of the 2023 season, who were relegated to Primera B after two and one year in the top flight, respectively. On 16 January 2024, Alianza Petrolera announced a relocation starting from this season, moving from Barrancabermeja to Valledupar,

Cesar Department Caesar Department ( es, Departamento del Cesar, links=no) or simply Caesar () is a department of Colombia located in the north of the country in the Caribbean region, bordering to the north with the Department of La Guajira, to the west with th ...

. With the move to Valledupar, the club also announced that it was dropping the word ''Petrolera'' from their name and changing colors, being rebranded to

Alianza F.C. Alianza Fútbol Club, also known simply as Alianza, is a football club based in San Salvador, El Salvador. Founded in 1958, Alianza was almost immediately successful, winning its first championships in the 1966 and 1967 Salvadoran seasons. Even m ...

The new club was presented that same day at a press conference in Valledupar.

Stadia and locations

Personnel and kits

Managerial changes

;Notes

Torneo Apertura

The Torneo Apertura (officially known as ''Liga BetPlay Dimayor 2024–I'') is the first tournament of the 2024 season. It began on 19 January and is scheduled to end on 9 June 2024.

First stage

Standings

Results

Top scorers

Source
Soccerway
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Relegation

A separate table is kept to determine the teams that are relegated to the

Categoría Primera B Categoría Primera B, commonly referred to as Torneo BetPlay Dimayor due to sponsorship by online betting company BetPlay (formerly ''Torneo Águila''), is the second-division football league in Colombia. Format DIMAYOR has applied a new forma ...

for the next season. This table is elaborated from a sum of all first stage games played in the three most recent seasons (including the 2022–I, 2022–II, 2023–I, 2023–II, 2024–I, and 2024–II tournaments), with the points earned being averaged per match played. The bottom two teams of the relegation table at the end of the season will be relegated to Categoría Primera B. Source
Dimayor

Rules for classification: 1) average, 2) 2024 points, 3) 2024 goal difference, 4) 2024 goals scored, 5) 2024 away goals scored, 6) 2024 away goals against, 7) 2024 wins, 8) 2024 yellow cards, 9) 2024 red cards, 10) drawing of lots.

References

External links

Dimayor's official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:2024 Categoria Primera A season Categoría Primera A seasons 1

Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...