East Bengal FC Reserves and Academy are the under-21, under-17, under-15 and under-13 teams of East Bengal. The under-21 team is often the last stage before the promotion into the first team. The youth teams participate in the
Elite league of various age groups. The East Bengal Academy was re-instated on 20 June 2016 with the motive to establish a strong footprint in Indian football by producing quality professional players. The main objective of this project has been to supply professional quality players to the East Bengal senior team & Indian national team. and then the club's Under-15 team qualified for the
Manchester United Premier Cup after being champions of India defeating
Mahindra United 1–0 in the final, and becoming South–East Asian regional runners up in 2007. The Junior team faced the youth teams of
Manchester United,
A.S. Roma and
Shandong Luneng and
FK Austria Wien in the final round held in
Manchester, however, they lost all the games in the group stages. In the 17–20th place play-off semi-finals, the team defeated Bukit Jalil of Malaysia by 3-1, but lost to
Central United of New Zealand in the 17th place play-offs by 5-3 via tiebreakers, after the game ended goalless. The U-15 team finished 18th The East Bengal U-19 team was the primary youth team before the
Elite League started in 2010. Players like
Israil Gurung, Saikat Saha Roy etc. were part of the East Bengal youth setup in the mid 2000s. In 2006, former East Bengal legend and
National League winning coach
Monoranjan Bhattacharya was appointed as the head coach of the East Bengal U-19 team. The East Bengal Academy started with new endeavours in 2016 as they brought in Ranjan Chowdhury as head of the project with an aim to produce Indian talents and build up the supply line for the main team of East Bengal. The team finished runners-up in the
2016–17 I-League U18, losing 2-1 to
AIFF Elite Academy in the final. The team also reached the semi-final in
2017–18. The team was disbanded after the
2019–20 Indian Elite League was called off due to
COVID-19 pandemic in India. In 2022, after the new investors
Emami Group joined the club, the youth teams have been revived ==Reserve team==