Today, on July 31, the season-2025/2026 in the National League U-19 will begin with matches between "Rukh" and "Poltava", as well as "Kolos" and "Kryvyi Rih".

Interest in it is great, since at a meeting of the leadership of the UAF, UPL, and representatives of UPL clubs that took place in March, the technical director of the UAF Igor Dedishin presented a project for reforming national competitions in the U-19 age category.

The reform envisages the unification of two currently parallel existing championships (one for teams of UPL clubs and another for teams of PFL and DYFU clubs). The idea is to create a National League U-19 and a Regional League U-19, with exchanges between the two leagues based on sporting principles.

The main favorites in the National League U-19 for UPL club teams in the 2025/2026 season are traditional ones — the champion of the last two seasons, "Dynamo", and the runner-up of the last two seasons, "Shakhtar".

Incidentally, for Kyiv's leader Igor Kostyuk, the first match of the new season will be his 200th in charge of Dynamo in the U-19 championship. He is the only coach in tournament history with over 150 matches and leads the rating of coaches-guardians by a wide margin.

The tandem of giants may face competition from teams that traditionally pay great attention to the development of children's and youth football. For example, "Rukh" (champion of the 2022/2023 season), "Kolos" (4th place in the last two seasons), "Karpaty" (bronze medalist of the 2024/2025 season), as well as teams that consistently hold positions in the upper part of the tournament table — "Oleksandria" and "Polesia".

Interesting changes have occurred at FC LNZ (the team will be coached by a known specialist Vitaliy Shumsky), "Zori" (Yaroslav Vishnyak with experience working in the UPL as head coach of Kolos), "Oleksandria" (Roman Loktionov), "Polesia" (Andriy Hitchenko) and "Kryvyi Rih", whose youth team was entrusted to a Spanish specialist Antoni Mascau.

Increased attention is paid to newcomers to the elite division, among whom only "Metalist 1925" has experience playing in the Ukrainian U-19 championship. The Kharkiv club was led this summer by a well-known former half-back and later youth football specialist Yevgen Nazarov.

Igor Klimovskiy will coach "Poltava", while Vitaliy Kostenko will lead "Kudryvka" — both have extensive experience managing professional adult teams. And the U-19 "Epicontr" team has entrusted its leadership to Yurii Furti, who has experience working at the FC Lviv school.