On 30 September 2017, the Special Congress held at Croke Park voted by 62% to restructure the Leinster and Munster championships as two provincial groups of five teams who competed on a round-robin basis.

The group winners and runners-up join four of the five strongest teams in the three Leinster quarter finals as the competition continued in a knock-out format.

An informal system of promotion or relegation operated in this round; if a team from the qualifier group won their quarter-final, they were seeded in the 2017 Leinster championship and the beaten seeded team competed in the 2017 Leinster qualifier In 2017 the bottom team in the Leinster qualifier group was relegated to the 2018 Christy Ring Cup (2nd tier).

All qualifier matches are knock-out and eventually result in two teams who progress to the two All-Ireland quarter-finals.

The GAA congress held in February 2017 voted to allow the winners of the 2017 Christy Ring cup to enter the 2017 qualifiers in a new preliminary round.

The Christy Ring cup winners played the losers of one of the three Leinster quarter finals.

Teams who had already met in the Leinster championship could not be drawn to meet again if such a pairing could be avoided.

Teams who had already met in the Leinster or Munster championships could not be drawn to meet again if such a pairing could be avoided.

The beaten finalists in the Leinster and Munster championships played the two winning teams from round two of the qualifiers in the two All-Ireland quarter-finals.

[12] In the United Kingdom, matches will be shown on Sky Sports and worldwide coverage will be provided on GAAGO.

[14] RTÉ, the national broadcaster in Ireland, will provide the majority of the live television coverage of the championship in the first year of a five-year deal running from 2017 until 2021.

The panel consisting of Brendan Cummins, Michael Duignan, Tomás Mulcahy, Jackie Tyrrell, Anthony Daly, Eddie Brennan and Cyril Farrell unanimously selected Galway's Gearóid McInerney as the Sunday game player of the year.