In the group stage, each group is played on a single round-robin format. The top two teams advance to the knockout stage.
Tiebreakers
The teams are ranked according to points (3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, 0 points for a loss). If tied on points, tiebreakers were applied in the following order:[3]
Goals scored in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
If more than two teams are tied, and after applying all head-to-head criteria above, a subset of teams are still tied, all head-to-head criteria above are reapplied exclusively to this subset of teams;
Goal difference in all group matches;
Goals scored in all group matches;
Drawing of lots.
Centralised venues
On 11 July, Durand Cup Organising Committee announced that for the first time the tournament would be played across more than one city—3 cities—including Kolkata.[2] The other two venues were decided to be Imphal and Guwahati.[2][4] The four groups were assigned one centralised venue keeping in mind that at least one of the teams in the group must be based from the host city.