The 2016 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup tournament proper will feature teams from all five tiers of men's soccer of the American Soccer Pyramid. Starting with the 2016 tournament, US Soccer took over the qualifying process that used to be handled by each association. According to US Soccer, all teams within the Division I, II, & III professional leagues will qualify automatically as in past years. Any national league not in the top three divisions can apply to use previous year's league standings as their qualification method. Remaining teams will participate in up to five qualifying rounds to determine entrants into the tournament proper. In prior years, slots were allocated and the individual associations created tournaments and qualifiers to determine their representatives. Final slot allocat