This page shows every match currently being played across the competitions we cover, with the score updating as it happens. A match appears here from kick-off and stays until the referee ends it — including the intervals people usually lose track of, because "live" is four separate states rather than one: in play, half-time, extra time, and a penalty shootout. A tie that goes to a shootout does not disappear from this list at 90 minutes; it stays, because it is still being decided.
Scores refresh every thirty seconds while the page is open, and stop refreshing when it is not — there is no benefit to polling a tab nobody is looking at. That interval is the reason a goal sometimes shows up here a moment after you hear about it elsewhere: we are reading from our own database, which is filled from the match feeds, rather than guessing from a clock.
Two providers cover many of these matches and they do not arrive in step. The rule we apply is that a thinner update never overwrites a fuller one — a pass carrying fewer events than we already hold is not allowed to replace them, even when it is the more recent message. It exists to prevent the most annoying failure in live scores, which is a goal appearing and then vanishing again when a lagging feed catches up.
If a competition is missing from this list while a match in it is being played, that usually means our provider does not offer live coverage for it — lower divisions and qualifying rounds are the common case. Those fixtures still appear on the schedule with their final result once it is in.