English 
Flag Football will be introduced as a new British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) discipline with five regional competitions in 2025–26.
The British American Football Association (BAFA) are pleased to announce that Flag Football will be added to the BUCS competition programme for the 2025-26 season. This discipline of American Football will operate as the BUCS Regional Flag Football Series, co-designed by BUCS, BAFA and NFL UK.
Flag Football is the fastest-growing format of the game both in Great Britain and worldwide. With it’s confirmed debut at Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games, the Higher Education sector presents a significant opportunity to grow participation and talent pathways within the UK. This format offers additional competitive opportunities for current contact players and accessible entry points for athletes transferring from other sports whilst enabling opportunities for those who want to give a new sport a try for the first time.
BUCS published the Making Changes to BUCS Competitions Framework, which summarises the current processes for making changes to our competitions framework and introduced new processes. One new process, Route 4 – New disciplines, allows BUCS to add distinct disciplines of existing sports, initially in a probation period, with no BUCS Points into the programme. The Regional Flag Football Series has been introduced via this process
