The Taça Guanabara ( English: Guanabara Cup) is an annual

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

tournament attached to the

Campeonato Carioca The Campeonato Carioca (Carioca Championship), officially known as Campeonato Estadual do Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro State Championship), also commonly known as the Cariocão, is the top-flight professional state football league in the Br ...

, the state football league in the

Rio de Janeiro state Rio de Janeiro () is one of the 27 federative units of Brazil. It has the second largest economy of Brazil, with the largest being that of the state of São Paulo. The state, which has 8.2% of the Brazilian population, is responsible for 9.2% of ...

. It has been organized since 1965 by the Rio de Janeiro State Football Federation. It has had different formats throughout its history. In its first seven editions (1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970 and 1971), the Taça Guanabara was a tournament in its own right, unrelated to the Campeonato Carioca, and the winner would represent Rio de Janeiro in the

Taça Brasil The Taça Brasil () was the Brazilian national football championship contested from 1959 to 1968. Bahia, Cruzeiro and Botafogo were the only champions to have played all phases of the tournament, because until the 1968 edition teams from Rio de ...

national league competition. From 1972 onward, the cup became the first round of the Campeonato Carioca. Since

2021 Like the year 2020, 2021 was also heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, due to the emergence of multiple Variants of SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 variants. The major global rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, which began at the end of 2020, continued ...

, the Taça Guanarabara is the first single round-robin phase of the Campeonato Carioca. The most successful team in the tournament's history is

Flamengo Clube de Regatas do Flamengo (; ), more commonly referred to as simply Flamengo, is a Brazilian multi sports club based in Rio de Janeiro, in the neighborhood of Gávea. It was founded and named after the Flamengo, Rio de Janeiro, Flamengo n ...

, who have won 25 times.

Format

The Taça Guanabara and the

Taça Rio Taça Rio ( English: Rio Cup) is an annual football tournament attached to Campeonato Carioca, the state football league in the Rio de Janeiro state. It has been organized since 1982 by the Rio de Janeiro State Football Federation. It has had ...

has become, throughout its history, recognized for the various changes in its format, causing confusion for many spectators. Since

, the Taça Guanarabara is the first single round-robin phase of the

, played by 12 teams. The team that finishes with the most points is the champion. The four best teams advance to the final stage of the Campeonato Carioca, and the clubs that finished 5th to 8th places compete in the Taça Rio.

History

The first season of the tournament was held in 1965. At the time, the tournament was considered a separate competition unrelated to the Campeonato Carioca. In its first years, its purpose was to define the Guanabara representative in the

, but it kept being played even after the Taça Brasil's last edition. In 1971, the tournament became the first stage of Campeonato Carioca but is still considered a separate competition to a certain extent, with a trophy awarded to the winner of the tournament. The current format has been used throughout the tournament's history with the exception of the 1994 and 1995 editions. In 1994, twelve teams were divided into two groups (similar to the current format). However, in the group stage, teams not only played against teams from their same group, but also played against the teams from the other group in the second phase of the group stage (similar to the Taça Rio format). After the group stage, the first placed team in each group faced each other in the Taça Guanabara final. Semi-finals were not played. The Taça Guanabara final results had no bearing on the Campeonato Carioca. The two highest placed teams of each Taça Guanabara group entered the final phase of Campeonato Carioca. Those four teams played a double

round-robin tournament A round-robin tournament or all-play-all tournament is a competition format in which each contestant meets every other participant, usually in turn.''Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged'' (1971, G. & ...

to contest the Campeonato Carioca championship. In 1995, the number of teams increased to 16 while the format remained similar to 1994: two groups of 8 teams contested two group stage phases. After the group stage, the top team of each group competed in the Taça Guanabara final, with the winner being awarded one point in the final phase of Campeonato Carioca. The first placed team in each group after the first and second phase of the group stage also received one extra point for a total of five "bonus" points contributed towards teams in the Campeonato Carioca. The top four teams in each group then contested the final phase of Campeonato Carioca in a double round-robin tournament to determine the winner of Campeonato Carioca. Because of these format changes, Taça Rio was not held in these three years. Since 1996, the old format has been adopted again.

Finalists

Titles by club

25 titles *

Vasco da Gama Vasco da Gama ( , ; – 24 December 1524), was a Portuguese explorer and nobleman who was the Portuguese discovery of the sea route to India, first European to reach India by sea. Da Gama's first voyage (1497–1499) was the first to link ...

13 titles * Fluminense 12 titles *

Botafogo Botafogo (local/standard alternative Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation: ) is a beachfront neighborhood (''bairro'') in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is a mostly upper middle class and small commerce community, and is located between the hills of M ...

8 titles * América 1 title * Americano 1 title *

Volta Redonda Volta Redonda () is a Municipalities of Brazil, municipality in the Rio de Janeiro (state), Rio de Janeiro state of Brazil with an area of 182.81 km2, located from 350m to 707m above the sea level (22°31'23" S, 44°06'15" W) and with a pop ...

1 title

Broadcasting rights

Brazil

Statistics

Since 1990, the winner of the Taça Guanabara has also won the State championship in 1992, 1994, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Taca Guanabara Campeonato Carioca Football cup competitions in Rio de Janeiro (state)