The sport was brought to Puerto Rico in the late nineteenth century, when sailors introduced the sport to the island. By the 1910s, organized clubs had begun to emerge, including the Ponce Association Football Club, founded in 1905 and regarded as the oldest known football club on the island. The first recorded football match took place in March 1911 between teams representing Comercio Sporting. Documented records of championship winners in Puerto Rico’s top divisions date from 1911 onward.
Despite its early introduction, football has not been the dominant sport in Puerto Rico, a pattern shared by several Caribbean nations. Organized championships began to take shape in the 1950s, and for several decades competitions were conducted on an amateur basis.
There were several amateur tournaments and leagues throughout the second half of the 20th century, but it wasn't until 1996, with the establishment of the Liga Mayor de Fútbol Nacional (Major League of National Football) that a significant institutional development occurred in Puerto Rican football, marking the beginning of a gradual process of professionalization. In 2005, the principal competition was rebranded as the Campeonato Nacional de Fútbol (National Football Championship). The transition to a fully professional structure was completed in 2008 with the creation of the Puerto Rico Soccer League.
San Juan FC in 1915.España FC (Puerto Rico) in 1927.
The Torneo Nacional Superior (TNS) (Superior National Tournament) was the first attempt at organizing the football clubs in the island. It lasted from 1911 until 1994, when a breakaway league formed, and that breakaway league would last until 2002.[1]
For unknown reasons, several teams broke away and created a second league. Both of them existed from 1995 until 2005, when a united island-wide championship began to be organized.
The Asociación de Fútbol de Puerto Rico (Puerto Rico Football Association) existed for a single season (1996) with teams from San Juan, Yabucoa, Caguas, Maunabo, Guayama, Ponce, Cabo Rojo, Mayagüez, Aguadilla, and Arecibo.[1]
Created by teams that broke away from the TNS, the Liga Mayor de Fútbol Nacional (LMFN) (Major League of National Football) lasted for nine seasons and ran parallel to the TNS.[1]
In 2008, the first professional league was created, the Puerto Rico Soccer League (PRSL), which was composed of eight teams playing the regular season, and the top four seeded moving on to the playoffs. A ninth team joined in 2009, three teams joined in 2010, and one team joined for the 2011 season, after which the league folded. A new professional league, the Liga Profesional de Fútbol de Puerto Rico, was scheduled to start in 2013.
3The 2011 championship match had only one leg. After 120 minutes, the game was decided in favor of FC Leones de Ponce, who were able to successful convert its first three penalty attempts and, also, were able to stop all three attempts from Sevilla FC Juncos.
In 2008, along with the first division, a PRSL 2nd division tournament was organized, anticipating a promotion/relegation system, which was scheduled to start in 2011, but that was postponed till 2013. In 2009, the Puerto Rican Football Federation renamed the 2nd division league as the Liga Nacional de Fútbol (National Football League) and made it a separate league. The 2008 season had eighteen teams divided in three groups; the 2009 season had sixteen teams divided in two groups; while the 2010 season had twenty-one teams divided in four groups. For the 2011 season, the LNFPR split into a first division with eight teams and a second division with 14 teams, retaking the promotion/relegation ideas, which is to start in 2013.
In August 2018, a new league called Liga Puerto Rico was announced by the Puerto Rican Football Federation.[2] Prior to the announcement, the federation organized a preparatory tournament that ran from March until June 2018.[3] Ten teams participated in the tournament which was eventually won by Bayamón FC.[4] The league's official launch event attended by FIFA and CONCACAF delegates was held on August 23, 2018 with the league set to begin play the following month.[5] The league began play on September 29, 2018.[6]
In 2025, the league was renamed as the Liga Puerto Rico Pro by the Puerto Rican Football Federation.
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