The Trophy is currently contested by all Second and Third Division clubs and a number of invited teams from the Nationwide Conference, and is played in a knockout (single elimination) format in North and South regional sections. The sectional winners play each other in the final at the Millennium Stadium due to the redevelopment of Wembley.
The competition for Third and Fourth (as they then were) Division clubs dates back to the 1983/4 season. Prior to that there had been a couple of different attempts to fill the gap in the calendar left by the collapse of the Anglo-Scottish Cup in 1981.
Various attempts have been made to solve the problem of reducing the 48 lower-division clubs to a round power of two (which is required for a knockout tournament): often the first round of the cup was played in round-robin groups of three; at other times the more senior clubs have been given byes into the second round. The addition of 8 (rather than 16) teams from the Conference has not solved this problem.