From the start, the Amateurliga Bremen was a feeder league to the Oberliga Nord which its champion had the option of promotion to.

This resulted however in a number of back-to-back championships, an oddity for leagues at this level in Germany where direct promotion is the standard.

The champion of Bremen continued to have to play-off for promotion, now to the Regionalliga, with the same opposition as before and the same limited success.

The system for promotion from the Verbandsliga remained mostly unchanged but the success rate for the clubs from Bremen greatly improved.

For the Verbandsliga Bremen, this meant a further slip, now to tier five, but also, for the first time in its history, direct promotion for the league champion.

The 1999–2000 season saw another league system change with the reduction of numbers of Regionalligas, this however had only one effect on the Verbandsliga, no promotion was available this year.

The 2006–07 league winner and runner-up, Bremer SV and FC Bremerhaven, did not receive an Oberliga licence and were not promoted.

The four northern German states then were the only region without an Oberliga and the five Verbandsligen sit right below the Regionalliga Nord, parallel to the two NOFV-Oberligen.

At the end of the 2007–08 season, the five winners of the northern Verbandsligas played with the sixth placed team from the Oberliga Nord for one last spot in the Regionalliga.

[3] In the future seasons, promotion for the Bremen champion will only be available through a set of play-off matches with the league winners from Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein.