We present a general subtraction scheme for NNLO calculations in massless
QCD: the \textit{colourful antenna subtraction method}. It is a reformulation
of the antenna subtraction approach designed to address some of the limitations
of the traditional framework, especially aiming at high-multiplicity processes.
In the context of the new formalism, structures needed to locally subtract the
infrared-divergent behaviour of real emission corrections are systematically
inferred from virtual subtraction terms, relying on the cancellation of
infrared singularities and on the correspondence between integrated and
unintegrated antenna functions. We illustrate in detail how the colourful
antenna subtraction method works up to NNLO. The algorithm is particularly
suited to be fully automated for the generation of NNLO subtraction terms for
generic processes. We employ the new formalism to assemble the subtraction
terms required for the calculation of the NNLO correction to hadronic three-jet
production and describe their validation procedure