The 2023 All Japan High School Soccer Tournament (第102回全国高等学校サッカー選手権大会; All Japan JFA 102nd High School Soccer Tournament) will mark the 102nd edition of the referred annually contested cup for High Schools over Japan, to be contested by all 48 prefectural qualifications' winning schools.^[1][2]

The defending champions are Okayama Gakugeikan, from Okayama Prefecture, who won the 2022 final with a 3–1 win over Kyoto Prefecture's Higashiyama in the Final, becoming the first high school from Okayama to ever win the competition. They won the title despite not playing at the top tier of Japan's youth league system, having finished the previous season as a mid-table team in the Chugoku Prince League, one of the nine regional leagues that composes the second tier.^[3][4]

As the norm, from the first round to the quarterfinals, the matches have a duration of 80 minutes, split into two halves of 40 minutes each. The semi-finals and the final have matches lasting 90 minutes, however, matching the standard match length of professional football. During the tournament, if a match should be tied, it directly requires a penalty shoot-outs, except for the final, where extra-time would be played if the match is kept tied for 90 minutes.

The entire tournament, including the prefectural tournament finals, will be having free live streaming on SportsBull and TVer.^[5] Alongside it, the semi-finals and the final will be aired on national television, being broadcast on NTV. In total, 43 commercial broadcasting companies will broadcast the tournament.

Calendar

The tournament will take place in a 12-day span, with the tournament split into a total of 6 stages. The draw to decide the tournament schedule and the match pairings is expected to be done in November, as the usual from the past editions.

Venues

The venues for the tournament are split into four different prefectures. In total, nine different stadiumswill be hosting matches for the tournament. Two stadiums are located for each of the Kanagawa, Chiba, and Saitama prefectures, while three stadiums are located in Tokyo.^[6]

• Tokyo – Japan National Stadium, Komazawa Olympic Park Stadium and Ajinomoto Field Nishigaoka
• Kanagawa – Kawasaki Todoroki Stadium and NHK Spring Mitsuzawa Football Stadium
• Saitama – Urawa Komaba Stadium and Saitama Stadium 2002
• Chiba – Kashiwanoha Stadium and ZA Oripri Stadium

Qualifying rounds

All the 47 prefectures holds knockout stage qualifiers for their respective High Schools. Tokyo's qualifiers is the only to qualify two teams to the competition, as they have the largest amount of registered High Schools affiliated with the All-Japan High School Soccer Federation. Teams playing at national/regional-level leagues earns a bye from the early stages, getting automatically allocated into the third or fourth round of their respective qualifiers, specially to accommodate their busier schedule.

Participating schools

Notable absences from the tournament are Premier League high schools Asahikawa Jitsugyo, Riseisha and RKU Kashiwa, respectively Hokkaido qualifiers' runner-up, Osaka qualifiers' runner-up and Chiba qualifiers' semi-finalist, Prince League's Higashiyama, who last year was the national tournament's runner-up ended also as a runner-up on this year's Kyoto qualifiers, and one of Tokyo's qualifiers semi-finalists Teikyo, who since 2009 was unable to qualify for the national tournament, despite being the only school from Tokyo to reach the 1st division of the Kanto Prince League since 2015, playing on it since 2019.

Meanwhile, eight of the 11 high schools that on 2023 played on the Premier League have qualified to the national competition. Defending champions Okayama Gakugeikan have qualified for the third consecutive time, and for the sixth-ever time in their history. Waseda Jitsugyo and Nago, competition debutants, are both the lowest-ranked teams in the tournament, as they played the 2023 season in their respective prefecture's 2nd divisions, which are part of the 5th tier of U-18 football in Japan.^[7]

• Note: In the sections below, team tiers (league levels) will be presented as follows:
  • National: (1): Premier League
  • Regional: (2): Prince League 1st Divs.; (3): Prince Leagues 2nd Divs.
  • Prefectural: (4): Football League 1st Divs.; (5): Football League 2nd Divs.

Schedule

The schedule was announced on 20 November 2022, after the draw was conducted by the JFA, following the completion of the competition's prefectural qualifications.^[8][9]

Top scorers

To be added.

References