The competition is Asia's oldest football tournament, and the world's third oldest professional club football tournament.
Before the commencement of the Indian domestic football season each year, the event serves as a pre-season knockout tournament for Indian football clubs from all categories.
The tournament is named after Sir Mortimer Durand, British India's Foreign Secretary from 1884 to 1894.
The Army's presence has been maintained after independence by the participation of many teams of the Indian Armed Forces. In 2016, Army Green became the most recent Army squad to win the competition.
The Durand Cup is currently held by FC Goa.
Sir Mortimer Durand founded the Durand football event, often known as the Durand Cup, in Shimla in 1888. Sir Durand was in Shimla, India, recovering from illness. He decided to award a prize to stimulate sporting competition in India after becoming aware of the benefits of sport as a means of maintaining health. The tournament's location was changed to New Delhi in 1940.
The Durand Cup has two stages: round-robin and knockouts. The group stage round has a total of 16 teams, divided into four groups of four teams each.
To complete their team rosters, each team must have a minimum of 22 players and a maximum of 30.
In terms of the overseas player limit, a team is only allowed to have four players in its lineup, with only three being named as starters.
Following the round-robin stage, the top 1 or 2 teams from each group advance to the knockout stage, which concludes in a final between two teams.
The winning team receives three trophies: the Durand Cup (the original tournament trophy, which has been a rolling trophy since 1965); the President's Cup (first presented by Dr. Rajendra Prasad, India's first President); and the Shimla Trophy (first presented by Dr. Rajendra Prasad, India's first Prime Minister) (first presented by citizens of Shimla in 1903 and, since 1965 became a rolling trophy).
