The Sports Guru
Win your league, stay where you are: that is the reality for some German fourth-tier champions. This article explains the simple arithmetic behind the problem, why one region keeps losing out, and what a December meeting could change.
Lokomotive Leipzig have taken the Regional League Northeast title two years running, yet they remain a fourth-tier club. Germany has five regional champions and only four promotion berths, so one winner is always left over. The real question is no longer whether the arrangement is broken but whether those in charge will repair it before more title-winners are left behind.
A bottleneck built into the pyramid
Under the Bundesliga, 2. Bundesliga and 3. Liga sits a fourth level made up of five regional leagues: North, West, Southwest, Northeast and Bavaria. Each one crowns a champion. Because the 3. Liga sends down just four clubs a year, there are four vacancies for five winners, and one team inevitably misses out.
The present workaround is clumsy. Champions of the West and Southwest are promoted without a play-off. The next automatic berth moves between the remaining three leagues over a three-year rotation, and the last berth goes to the winner of a play-off involving the two leagues left over. The case for treating the West and Southwest favourably is that they hold more registered men's sides, since more people live there.
As a stand-alone principle, that can be defended. In practice, the play-off burden lands unevenly, and one region has suffered the most.
The east keeps drawing the short straw
The Northeast covers the old East Germany, and its champion is increasingly the one shut out. Lok Leipzig were denied in 2020, 2025 and again this summer, when Würzburger Kickers, the Bavarian representatives, beat them 3-1 over two legs. Dynamo Berlin missed out in 2022 and Energie Cottbus in 2023. Hansa Rostock are the only eastern side in the 3. Liga this season.
The BBC's report links the east's difficulties partly to lingering economic gaps with the west. It points out that not one of the 40 firms in the DAX has its base in the former east outside Berlin, while pay is lower there, joblessness higher, and the population both ageing and shrinking. Clubs in the region struggle to attract sponsors on the scale available further west.
Leipzig captain Djamal Ziane has little patience for the population argument. Attendances, he says, point the other way. The Northeast drew an average of 3,125 last season, about double the other leagues, according to the report. Lok's own figure of 6,352 ranked fourth, and over 11,000 came to the derby with Chemie Leipzig.
That makes uncomfortable reading for defenders of the current set-up. If places follow the number of registered teams, the east pays for its history. If places followed the size of the crowds, the east would have a strong claim. The system applies neither test in the east's favour.
The compass model: a map redrawn every year
Eastern clubs started the reform drive in March 2025 with the slogan "champions must go up". They want four leagues instead of five, with boundaries drawn afresh each season by artificial intelligence that weighs away-trip distances and appealing derbies. The name "compass model" reflects the fact that the map can point anywhere.
What the east offers in return is notable. The Northeast would let go of its tie to the former GDR territory. Tommy Haeder, 35, chief executive of Chemnitzer FC and the face of the campaign, says he wants to leave the east-west argument behind, and believes a younger generation of officials has less nostalgia for it. He adds a youth-development point: eastern clubs could keep promising children at home instead of seeing them move to academies in Hamburg, Dortmund or Stuttgart at the age of 10.
More than 80 clubs, according to the report, now back the campaign, from every part of the country and various levels. Union Berlin were the first Bundesliga side to endorse it formally, with president Dirk Zingler saying the present arrangement conflicts with the club's view of sporting competition. Borussia Dortmund's Hans-Joachim Watzke, who also chairs the Bundesliga, named the compass model as the best option. Marco Rose, now head coach at Bournemouth and formerly a player and coach at Lok Leipzig, added his support.
The vote that went sideways
Then came the ballot. At the end of June, the regional federations running it announced two late alterations. The new leagues would hold 18 teams instead of 20, which the report says weakened the model's appeal because 10 more teams would lose out. A further condition demanded a majority in each of the five regions.
Even so, the compass model gained an overall majority of 50.9%, with 60.9% in the West, 61.5% in the North and 76.3% in the Northeast. The Southwest preferred a rival option that would dissolve the northeastern league and redistribute its clubs, leaving the Southwest and West untouched. Bavaria opted for "further talks". Its federation president, Christoph Kern, said no proposal had majority backing among his clubs and that he would not hand over the Regional League Bavaria.
The objections carry weight. FSV Frankfurt chief executive Robert Lempka described the compass model as a switch from a working system to a riskier, more complicated one, and said it troubled him that an algorithm might settle a club's future. That is a reasonable concern about an untested map that shifts annually. Yet it sits uneasily beside the fact that the existing arrangement strands a champion every single year.
Haeder called the vote "an absolute catastrophe - completely amateurish".
Protest as a calendar fixture
Anger has spread from boardrooms to the stands. In the Northeast this season, nearly every match has kicked off late because players decline to move for the opening minute. On day one, Lok supporters hurled hundreds of plastic trophies onto the pitch to mock the hollowness of two straight titles. At a Bayern Munich reserve fixture in the Bavarian league, ultras staged a display aimed at the BFV, and Bundesliga fans have unfurled banners demanding the compass model immediately.
When supporters of top-flight clubs campaign over the fourth tier, the matter is no longer a local quarrel. It asks whether a pyramid can credibly reward merit when winning one of its divisions leads nowhere.
What December could settle
The compass may at last be pointing somewhere. The German Football Federation (DFB) has summoned an extraordinary general meeting for 18 December. President Bernd Neuendorf says the matter has to be settled, noting that the compass model collected the most votes and offers the best prospect of improved talent development.
Whatever is agreed would apply only from the 2028-29 season. For Ziane, now 34 and in his 13th season at Lok, that comes too late. He regards the 3. Liga as probably the highest level he can reach, and says promotion with his hometown club would have meant the world to him. His side have won the league two years in a row, and he says they have to push themselves to remember it.
That is the true price of the arithmetic. A structure that leaves one champion without a place does more than withhold a promotion; it invites a title-winning club, year after year, to treat its own success as a technicality.
Frequently Asked Questions
There are five regional divisions but only four places, because four teams are relegated from the 3. Liga each year. One champion therefore misses out.
The West and Southwest champions go up automatically. A third automatic place moves between the other three leagues on a three-year rotation, and the final place goes to the winner of a play-off between the remaining two champions.
It is a proposal to cut the fourth tier from five leagues to four, with borders redrawn each season using artificial intelligence. Factors such as away-travel distances and derbies would be considered.
The DFB has called an extraordinary general meeting for 18 December. Any change would only be implemented in the 2028-29 season.
Research: This article uses the archived evidence supplied for this story. Story inspiration: BBC Sport's original report.