Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the league season was planned to be played as follows: On 25 July 2020, DIMAYOR's General Assembly decided to continue playing the Torneo Apertura as the only tournament to be held in the season, with the semifinal stage originally planned for the Torneo Finalización.
[4] Further format changes were confirmed on 13 August 2020, with DIMAYOR's General Assembly deciding to suspend relegation for this season and postpone it until the end of the first semester of 2021, in order to ensure teams could be able to play the same amount of matches as originally scheduled before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The semifinal stage was ultimately replaced by double-legged knockout series to decide the league champions, whilst the 12 teams that failed to qualify for the knockout stage would be sorted into three groups of four teams, with the group winners and the best group runners-up advancing to a single-legged semifinal stage and the winners of those semifinals facing each other in a single-legged final, with its winner playing against the aggregate table fourth-best placed team not qualified for the 2021 Copa Libertadores for the Colombia 4 berth to the 2021 Copa Sudamericana.
[6] 20 teams took part, eighteen of them returning from last season plus Deportivo Pereira and Boyacá Chicó, who were promoted from the 2019 Primera B.
On 13 March 2020, after a meeting with its member clubs, DIMAYOR announced the temporary suspension of the tournament, along with the Primera B and Copa Colombia ones, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
[44] On 29 June, and after an Assembly of its member clubs, DIMAYOR presented a timetable for the implementation of the biosecurity protocol to resume its competitions, with COVID-19 testing for players and staff members of every club scheduled to be held from 10 to 15 July, and individual training resuming the following day.
According to said timetable, the league was scheduled to resume on 27 August, pending the fulfillment of the previous stages as well as final approval by the Colombian government.