The
Peruvian Segunda División was the second division of Peruvian football from 1912 to 1925. It allowed promotion to the Primera Division for the starting seasons and was not a professional tournament. In the inaugural
1912 season, the First and Second Division were put together with 8 teams each. It was dissolved in 1925 after the
Peruvian Football Federation was formed. The tournament was restarted in 1926, under the organization of the FPF, with the name of "Intermediate Tournament", the first champion was Association Alianza, after that in 1935 the championship was renamed "Ascenso División de Honor" where it granted promotion to teams from
Lima and
Callao. It would later be replaced by the current Segunda Division, now known as the Liga 2, in 1936. Despite being founded in 1936, the league did not have its first season up until
1943, where
Atlético Telmo Carbajo won the tournament. For decades after it was first formed in 1943, only clubs from the
Department of Lima participated in the annual tournament where the winner gets promoted to the
Copa Perú. From 1988 to 1990, the winner got promoted to the Torneo Metropolitano Regional. It was not until 1992 when Peruvian football federation expanded the tournament to other regions, expanding it to the
Ica and
Callao. From 1993 to 1997 the winner was promoted directly to the
Primera División. From 1998 it was established that the champion of this tournament would play a revalidation match with the team that finished second to last in the decentralized championship of the same year. In 2002, following the FPF's policy of increasing the number of teams in the first division, the champion of this tournament was immediately promoted. In 2004 and 2005 the format changed, establishing that the champion and runner-up of the second division would be integrated into Region 4 of the
Copa Perú. In 2006, the Second Division was moved up to the second tier once again, where the winner gets promotion to the First Division. As a result, the Copa Peru was moved down to the third tier. It was only in 2006 that it was decided to decentralize this tournament (until then reserved for teams from
Lima and
Callao), the championship began to be played with teams from different departments of Peru that obtained the category. However, despite the decentralist spirit of this measure, some articles were established in the regulations that obliged teams of a certain distance from
Lima to pay the tickets of rival teams. It should be said that with this, the duality of promotion to the First Division occurred because the Copa Perú, the traditional amateur football tournament, was also of a national nature, a situation that does not happen in any country worldwide and where it was seen that the Second Division should remain as the only way to promotion to the First Division. However, while it was nominally Second Professional, it was officially promotional. In 2019, the Peruvian Football Federation announced the creation of the
Liga 3, which replaced the Copa Peru as the third tier, moving the Copa Peru down to the fourth tier in 2024. Relegation from the Liga 2 was since changed to the Liga 3. In 2026, with the creation of the
Copa de la Liga, teams from the Liga 2 compete alongside teams from the Liga 1 for the domestic cup competition. == Division levels ==