The NCAA Division I Women's Soccer Championship, sometimes known as the Women's College Cup, is an American college soccer tournament conducted by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), and determines the Division I women's national champion.
The NCAA began conducting a single division Women's Soccer Championship tournament in 1982 with a 12-team tournament. The tournament became the Division I Championship in 1986, when Division III was created for non-scholarship programs. Currently, the tournament field consists of 64 teams. The semifinals and final of the tournament, held at a single site every year, are collectively known as the Women's College Cup (analogous to the College Cup in men's soccer).
Historically, North Carolina has been the dominant school in Division I women's soccer. Widely known as one of the most successful collegiate programs in any NCAA sport, the Tar Heels have won 22 national championships, out of the 43 NCAA tournaments contested. They also won the only AIAW national championship in soccer (1981). The Tar Heels have reached the College Cup 30 times. Former head coach Anson Dorrance (1979-2024) led North Carolina to all 22 of their titles (21 NCAA and 1 AIAW) and is considered one of the greatest soccer coaches in NCAA history.
Only seven other schools have won multiple titles: Florida State (5 titles, 3-time runner-up and 13 College Cup appearances), Notre Dame (3 titles, 5-time runner-up and 12 College Cup appearances), Stanford (3 titles, 2-time runner-up and 10 College Cup appearances), UCLA (2 titles, 4-time runner-up and 12 College Cup appearances), Santa Clara (2 titles, 1-time runner up and 11 College Cup appearances), Portland (2 titles, 1-time runner-up and 8 College Cup appearances), and USC (2 titles, 2 College Cup appearances).
Starting in 2001, the NCAA started seeing the top 2 teams in each region. This expanded to the top 4 teams in each region in 2003, and the top 8 teams in each region in 2022. The teams' seeds are shown in superscript next to the result.