Nemzeti Bajnokság II
association football league
The Nemzeti Bajnokság II also known as NB II or Merkantil Bank Liga after its title sponsor, OTP Bank's subsidiary, is a professional association football league in Hungary and the second division level of the Hungarian football league system. Since the 2026–27 season, the champion is promoted directly, while the second-placed team has the opportunity to be promoted to the first division in a play-off against the eleventh-placed team from the Nemzeti Bajnokság I, while the two lowest teams in second league are relegated to Nemzeti Bajnokság III.
From the 2024–25 season, only 16 teams will participate in the league.
History
Nemzeti Bajnokság II was founded in 1901, having 8 teams. The first champions were 33FC having won the 1901 Nemzeti Bajnokság II season. The first two teams would participate in a promotion playoff with the last 2 teams from the first league (1901 Nemzeti Bajnokság I). The early decades were characterized by a strong Budapest-centric model; the core of the league consisted of clubs from the capital, while regional football developed independently within separate district championships. A major turning point came in 1926 with the introduction of professionalism and the establishment of the nationwide Professional II Division. This step not only bridged the gap between capital and regional clubs but also sustained the competitiveness of the league through the challenges of the Great Depression and World War II, during which the league's geographical reach temporarily expanded from Upper Hungary to Transylvania due to border shifts also competed in the league such as Ungvári AC and Nagyvárad AC.
The post-WWII nationalization and socialist sports management fundamentally reshaped the landscape. Clubs were reorganized around factories, trade unions, or armed forces, sparking the rise of industrial towns in the countryside. During this era, the structure of the NB II (or occasionally NB B) constantly fluctuated between a single nationwide group and multiple regional groups.
The public source identifies “Nemzeti Bajnokság II” as association football league. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Nemzeti, Bajnokság and association.
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The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q732721. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2026, 2024, 1901 and 1926.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nemzeti Bajnokság II” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.