Village Super League: 137 village teams, no professionals, free to watch

Why this one is worth the detour

Chinese grassroots culture at full volume with nothing staged for visitors: the players are farmers, butchers, teachers and students aged 16 to 45, there are no transfer fees, and the half-time entertainment is whatever the villages bring — Miao and Dong performances, county-fair food stalls, and prizes that have included live pigs and ducks. It has drawn crowds that would be respectable in a professional league, and enough outside attention that a delegation of African diplomats visited in June 2026. The organisers have a published roadmap: an international friendly in 2024, matches with Belt-and-Road countries in 2026, and a “Village World Cup” in Rongjiang in 2028.

Two different competitions — don't confuse them

English coverage regularly merges these. They are separate:

• The Village Super League itself — the village-level competition in Rongjiang. 4th season: 2 January – 25 July 2026, 137 teams, 528 matches including a 422-match qualifying round in 20 groups.
• The 2026 Guizhou Cunchao Championship — a province-wide competition built on the format, running 16 May to 22 August 2026 across all nine prefectures in four stages, 30 matches, with the final played at the Rongjiang ground.

Getting in, and the part we can't confirm

Matches are free. The mechanism reported for recent seasons is advance booking or on-the-spot QR registration through a WeChat mini-program (“黔东南一码通”), with crowd caps at peak fixtures and unclaimed bookings released at 20:00 on match day. We could not verify on any official page whether that system is still in use for 2026–27, nor whether it accepts a passport rather than a Chinese ID card — and that is the single most likely place a foreign visitor gets stuck. Plan to arrive early, be ready to register on the spot, and check the current rule before travelling. If you want us to check it for you when you have dates, message us on WhatsApp.

Getting there

Rongjiang station is on the Guiyang–Guangzhou high-speed line, roughly an hour from either Guiyang or Guilin — which makes this one of the easier “deep China” experiences to reach. The ground is about 6 km from the station: bus 5 to the Chengbei New District Gymnasium stop leaves you 20 m from the pitch in about 20 minutes, or a taxi takes just over ten. The nearest airport is Guiyang Longdongbao (KWE), then the train.

Rongjiang sits on the same circuit as the rest of southeast Guizhou's Miao and Dong country, so a match pairs naturally with the villages around Kaili and, further west, Wanfenglin.

Status: The next edition has not been scheduled publicly — we are not going to guess a month for it. This page carries what the last edition actually was, and is updated when the organisers announce. Runs annually as a months-long season rather than on a fixed weekend. The 4th season ran 2 January to 25 July 2026. Earlier seasons opened in May — the start is an administrative decision, not a calendar one, so the 2027 opening cannot be inferred from the pattern. The 2026 season and the separate provincial championship are confirmed from official and state-media sources. Entry mechanics are not: the booking mini-program described below comes from a 2025 guide, and whether it accepts a passport is unverified. Source: China News Service and Guizhou Daily reporting on the 4th season's opening and final, the Guizhou provincial government's own pages on the 2026 provincial championship and on the Cunchao roadmap, and Xinhua on the June 2026 diplomatic visit; entry mechanics come from a 2025 regional guide and are flagged below as unconfirmed · checked 2026-08-22