Canadian Championship 2024 preview

Tracing its history back to 2008, the Canadian Championship was the first serious attempt to run a competition that would encompass all of Canada's top clubs. Although the Challenge Trophy has been in existence since 1913, it is purely for amateur sides, and it wasn't until 2003 that the Open Canada Cup was established. Growing from the Canadian Professional Soccer League Cup, which ran from 1993 to 2002, the Open Cup included all the top semi-professional sides north of the border, even if those playing in the US professional leagues were neither invited nor interested in competing (save for USL First Division outfit Toronto Lynx, runners-up on their sole entry in 2006). Both the CPSL Cup and the Open Cup were dominated by teams from Ontario, with clubs from British Columbia only enterting for the first time in 2007, the final year of the Open Cup. No clubs from Alberta, Manitoba, or elsewhere were involved, despite varying levels of semi-professionalism operating in Calgary, Edmonton, and Alberta.

The Open Cup was abandoned after the 2007 edition won by Trois-Rivières Attak (effectively a reserve side for USL First Division club Montreal Impact), but in 2002 a group of fans of USL First Division clubs Montreal Impact, Toronto Lynx, and Vancouver Whitecaps clubbed together to fund the Voyaguers Cup, a trophy awarded to the winner of a round-robin competition decided by the sides' regular season games against one another. In 2007, the cup was contested just by Montreal and Vancouver after Lynx took a voluntarily two-tier demotion.

For the 2008 season, Toronto FC of MLS joined the fray, sufficient for Canada Soccer to award a CONCACAF Champions Cup place to the winner of a separate home and away round-robin league and officially dub it the Canadian Championship. Montreal won the first of the new editions of the Voyageurs Cup but Toronto dominated from 2009 to 2012, by which time both Montreal and Vancouver - or succession clubs, at least - were also domiciled in MLS. FC Edmonton, who competed in the second North American Soccer League, were added from the 2011 Voyageurs Cup, taking the number of competitors up to four. It swelled again to five in 2014 with the addition of the NASL's Ottawa Fury, and to six in 2018 when the champions of League 1 Ontario and Ligue 1 Quebec were invited to compete, Edmonton having suspended operations on the collapse of the NASL (Ottawa moved to the USL Championship and maintained their participation in the Canadian Championship).

In 2019, with the arrival of the Canadian Premier League, the number of entrants grew again, this time to thirteen. The three MLS clubs would be joined by Ottawa Fury, the seven inaugural CPL participants, and the champions of Ontario and Quebec, with Vaughn Azzuri of L1Ontario almost causing an upset, eliminated on away goals by HFX Wanderers. With entrants from Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Quebec, the 2019 competition was the first truly national Canadian Championship, carried off by Quebec as Montreal Impact defeated Toronto FC in the final.

2020 was a step backwards as the COVID-19 pandemic restricted the competition to a single game within Ontario between Toronto FC and CPL champions Forge FC, but 2021 again brought thirteen teams back into the competition, with eight CPL teams making up for the loss of Ottawa Fury. In 2023 the format was tweaked again with the addition of the champions of League 1 British Columbia increasing the number of entrants to fourteen, although MLS clubs have won every edition since 2008.

This year's competition again features fourteen clubs, all of whom bar Montreal and Vancouver - the two highest placed MLS clubs from 2023 - entering at the Preliminary Round stage, the six winners going forward to join them in the quarterfinals.