Systems and methods for service preemption selection in a network include receiving, from an ingress link, a request to establish a service on a path in the network while preempting one or more existing services if required to establish the service, wherein the request comprises a list of any previously selected services for preemption and an indication of whether preemption is required on the ingress link, wherein the service and the one or more existing services comprise an end-to-end path in the network; selecting, if required based on the indication, one or more services for preemption on the ingress link based on service selection criteria; and forwarding the request on an egress link to an adjacent node with any updates based on the selecting.