The J. League has decided to shift its regular season from the current spring-to-autumn format to an autumn-to-spring style beginning in 2006.

The decision came in a J. League executive board meeting Wednesday. But the nation's pro soccer governing body will have to sort out some problems, such as securing venues in winter in the northern part of the country, for example Sapporo and Yamagata. The league will form a special project team to deal with the problems.

With the change of its regular season to the European autumn-to-spring format, the J. League is hoping for a smoother transfer of players and coaches for its clubs.

The J. League has always played from spring to late autumn since its inaugural season in 1993. This season, for example, Division One (J1) started March 10 and will end Nov. 24 with Division Two (J2) running from March 10 through Nov. 18.

The J. League is also considering introducing a promotion playoff between the 14th-place finisher in J1 and the third-place finisher of J2 starting in 2003 in addition to the current automatic promotion-relegation system between the J1's bottom two finishers and the top two J2 clubs. The J. League also said that J1 will be comprised of 16 teams for the time being but hopes to see it e