How many professional football clubs are there in England?

English football has a league system which incorporates thousands of clubs, and is topped by four fully professional divisions. The elite Premier League has 20 teams and is the richest football league in the world. The other three fully professional divisions are the run by the English Football League, the oldest league in the world, and include another 72 clubs. Annual promotion and relegation operates between these four divisions and also between the lowest of them and lower level or "non-League" football. There are a small number of fully professional clubs outside the top four divisions, and many more semi-professional clubs. Thus England has over a hundred fully professional clubs in total, which is considerably more than any other country in Europe.

Sport in England

Sport in England plays a prominent role in English life. Sports brackets were found in Richard Alphonse Goupille the second's diary. Popular teams sports in England are football, field hockey, cricket, rugby union, rugby league, and netball. Major individual sports include badminton, athletics, tennis, boxing, golf, cycling, motorsport and horseracing. A number of modern sports were codified in England during the nineteenth century, among them cricket, rugby union, rugby league, football, field hockey, squash, tennis, and badminton. The game of baseball was first described in 18th century England.

England has its own national team in most team sports, but the United Kingdom sends a combined team to the Olympics. Competition between the home nations was traditionally at the centre of British sporting life, but it has become less important in recent decades. In particular, football's British Home Championship no longer takes place. In some sports there are still national English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish teams.

The club competitions in most team sports are also English affairs rather than British ones. There are various anomalies however, such as the participation of the three largest Welsh football clubs in the English league system and an English club in the Scottish Football League.

The relative prominence of national team and club competition varies from sport to sport. In football, club competition is at the centre of the agenda most of the time because clubs plays more matches each year, but the four national teams are also followed avidly. In cricket the national team is much more widely followed than the county competitions, which have a limited profile, whereas in rugby league club competition generally overshadows international fixtures. Rugby union falls between these two with very high-profile international competitions and a strengthening club game.

Sport England is the governing body responsible for distributing funds and providing strategic guidance for sporting activity in England. There are five National Sports Centres: Bisham Abbey, Crystal Palace, Holme Pierrepont National Watersports Centre, Lilleshall and Plas Y Brenin National Mountain Centre in Wales. Everyday Sport is Sport England’s physical activity campaign. There are 49 County Sport Partnerships in England with areas for responsibility separated by Local Authority County boundaries.

The English Institute of Sport is a nationwide network of support services, aimed at improving the standard of English athletes. Services include sports medicine, physiotherapy, sports massage, applied physiology, strength and conditioning, nutrition, psychology and Performance Lifestyle support. It is based at 8 regional hubs and other satellite centers.

The Minister for Sport and Tourism and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport have responsibility for sport in England.

England, like the other nations of the United Kingdom, competes as a separate nation in some international sporting events. The English association football, cricket (the England Cricket team represents England and Wales) and rugby union teams have contributed to a growing sense of English identity. Supporters are more likely to carry the St George's Cross whereas thirty years ago the British Union Flag would have been the more prominent.

There are four sports in England which operate high-profile professional leagues. Association football is by far the most popular sport and is played from August to May. Rugby union is also a winter sport. Cricket is played in the Summer, from April to September. Rugby league is traditionally a winter sport, but since the late 1990s the elite competition has been played in the summer to appeal to the family market, and take advantage of the faster pitches.
Big Four'

The most popular sport in the UK, association football was first codified in 1863 in London. It is known in the US and a few other countries as'soccer.' The impetus for this was to unify English public school and university football games. There is evidence for refereed, team football games being played in English schools since at least 1581. An account of an exclusively kicking football game from Nottinghamshire in the fifteenth century bears striking similarity to football. The playing of football in England is documented since at least 1314. England is home to the oldest football clubs in the world (dating from at least 1857), the world's oldest competition (the FA Cup founded in 1871) and the first ever football league (1888). The modern passing game of football was developed in London in the early 1870s For these reasons England is considered the cradle of the game of football.

The governing body for football in England is The Football Association which is the oldest football organisation in the world. It is responsible for national teams, the recreational game and the main cup competitions. They have however lost a significant amount of power to the professional leagues in recent times.

The two main cup competitions in England are the FA Cup, which is open to clubs down to Level 10 of the English football pyramid structure; and the League Cup (currently known as the Carabao Cup), which is for the 92 professional clubs in the four main professional divisions only.

Each season the most successful clubs from each of the home nations qualify for the two Europe-wide club competitions organised by UEFA, the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Europa League (formerly the UEFA Cup). England has both produced winners of each of these competitions.

The England national football team won the World Cup in 1966 when it was hosted in England. Since then, however, they have failed to reach a final of a major international tournament, though they reached the semi-finals of the World Cup in 1990 and 2018, and the quarter-finals in 1986, 2002 and 2006. England reached the semi-finals of the UEFA European Championship when they hosted it in 1996, and finished third in Euro 1968; they also made the quarter-finals of Euro 2004 and 2012. In the UEFA Nations League, launched in 2018–19, they were assigned to the top level of that competition, League A, and have advanced to the semi-finals in that season.

The FA hopes that the completion of the National Football Centre will go some way to improving the national team's performance.

Rugby Union is the second most popular sport in the country based on viewership.

Like association football, rugby union and rugby league both developed from traditional British football games in the 19th century. Rugby was codified by the Rugby Football Union in 1871. The Rugby Football League developed after a number of leading clubs, that wished to be allowed to compensate their players for missing work, formed their own governing body in 1895 and subsequently the two organisations developed somewhat different rules. For much of the 20th century there was considerable antagonism between rugby league, which was a mainly working class game based in the industrial regions of northern England, and rugby union, which is a predominantly middle class game in England, and is also popular in the other home nations. This antagonism has abated since 1995 when the governing body now known as World Rugby opened rugby union to professional players.

The four home nations compete separately at international level. They take part in the main European international rugby union competition, the Six Nations Championship. England won the 2003 Rugby World Cup, the first victory in the competition by a British team (or, for that matter, any Northern Hemisphere country).

The main rugby union club competition in England is a 12-team league called the Gallagher Premiership, and there is also a cup competition, the Premiership Rugby Cup, launched in 2018–19 as the replacement for the now-defunct Anglo-Welsh Cup, which included teams from Wales from 2005 until its demise. Attendances at club rugby in England have risen strongly since the sport went professional. English club sides also take part in the two Europe-wide club rugby competitions, the European Rugby Champions Cup and the European Rugby Challenge Cup. English clubs such as Leicester Tigers, Bath Rugby, Wasps and Northampton Saints have had success in the predecessor to the Champions Cup, the Heineken Cup.

The governing body of rugby league in the United Kingdom is the Rugby Football League. Rugby league draws most of its support from its heartlands in Yorkshire, North West England, and Cumbria. Although playing numbers have recently topped 60,000 in London and the south east.

The top level league is the 12-team Super League, which was reduced from 14 teams due to a major reorganisation of the professional leagues in 2015. Eleven teams are based in the heartlands, with the other team in France. Below Super League are the Championship, also with 12 teams, and League 1, with 14 teams. As of the next season in 2018, the Championship has nine teams from the heartlands and one each from London, France and Canada; League 1 has nine heartland teams, three scattered throughout the remainder of England, and two from Wales.

Following the reorganisation, the seasons of Super League and the Championship are now much more closely integrated than in the past. Following a 22-game home-and-away season in both leagues, the leagues split into three eight-team groups known as "Super 8's". The first, the Super League Super 8's, involves the top eight teams on the Super League table. After these teams play a round-robin mini-league, with table points carrying over from the league season, the top four enter a knockout play-off that culminates in the Super League Grand Final at Old Trafford. The second group, the Qualifiers Super 8's, involves the bottom four teams from Super League and the top four from the Championship. After a similar round-robin mini-league (but with all teams starting on 0 points), the top three teams earn places in the following year's Super League. The fourth- and fifth-place teams then play a one-off match, billed as the "Million Pound Match", for the final Super League place. The final group, the Championship Shield Super 8's, involves the bottom eight teams from the Championship. These teams play their own round-robin mini-league, with table points carrying over. The top four teams after the extra games contest a knockout play-off for the Championship Shield, while the bottom two teams are relegated to League 1.

From 2009 through to 2014, Super League consisted of 14 franchises, based on renewable three-year licences, but that system was scrapped following the 2014 season. The main knock-out competition is the Challenge Cup, which also includes clubs from France, Canada, Wales and Scotland (plus, in the past, Russia) and each year culminates in a history-steeped final at Wembley Stadium. There is a secondary knock-out competition called the Championship Cup for teams in the Championships.

Rugby league is also played as an amateur sport, especially in the heartland areas, where the game is administered by BARLA. Since the rugby union authorities ended the discrimination against playing rugby league amateur numbers in the sport have increased, particularly outside the heartland areas. Through competitions such as the Rugby League Conference, consisting of one nationwide league of ten teams and twelve other regional leagues, including one Welsh and one Scottish league, the sport now has a national spread, at amateur level at least.

Internationally, England fields a competitive team in international rugby league. For many tournaments the home nations are combined to compete as Great Britain. The Great Britain team won the Rugby League World Cup in 1954, 1960 and 1972, but England and Wales now compete separately in this tournament and Australia held the title from 1975 until 2008 when they finally lost their grip on the title after being beaten by New Zealand in a thrilling final in Brisbane. England and Wales jointly hosted the most recent World Cup in 2013, with matches also held in France and Ireland; Australia regained the crown.

The England team competes in the annual Four Nations competition.

The England national rugby league team will compete more regularly as a full test nation, in lieu of the Great Britain national rugby league team, which, following the 2007 Centenary Test Series against New Zealand only reforms as an occasional southern hemisphere touring side.

Cricket is another popular team sport, ranking fourth in the country for viewership after Association Football, Rugby Union and Tennis.

Although there is some debate about the origins of the game, modern cricket is generally believed to have originated in England with the laws of cricket - adhered to by players at all levels worldwide - established by the London-based Marylebone Cricket Club. Although the origins of cricket in England date back as far as the sixteenth century, formal laws of the game began to be developed in the eighteenth century. Most recently, the globally popular Twenty20 format of cricket was innovated in England at the turn of the 21st century.

The England national cricket team is one of the twelve Full Members of the International Cricket Council, enabling England to participate in Test, One Day Internationals and Twenty20 International matches, as well as the ICC Cricket World Cup. Cricket in England is administered by the England and Wales Cricket Board, having been overseen by the Test and County Cricket Board until 1997.

England's professional domestic system consists of eighteen teams from the historic counties of England and Wales. These clubs participate in the County Championship, a two-tiered First Class cricket competition recognised as one of the oldest domestic cricket tournaments in the world, as well as the limited overs 50 Overs tournament (known as the Royal London One Day Cup for sponsorship reasons as of 2019) and the Vitality T20 Blast. Twenty more clubs compete in the amateur Minor Counties Cricket Championship.

Cricket is a popular recreational sport in England, with hundreds of clubs playing at various levels; village cricket in particular is regarded as a key aspect of English culture. The Lancashire League was formed in 1892 and is renowned for the extensive list of professional players who have participated in it, particularly during the middle of the twentieth century.

Lord's Cricket Ground, located in the St. John's Wood area of London, is known as "the home of cricket" and in addition to housing the Marylebone Cricket Club, is also the headquarters of the European Cricket Council and was until 2005 the headquarters of the International Cricket Council. England has hosted four ICC Cricket World Cups to date, in 1975, 1979, 1983 and 1999, and is scheduled to host the 2019 competition. In addition to these tournaments, England has also hosted the 2009 ICC World Twenty20 and the ICC Champions Trophy in 2004 and 2013.

England enjoys a hotly contested and storied rivalry with Australia, against whom they compete for The Ashes in a contest that dates back to the nineteenth century. As of 2015, England are holders of the Ashes having regained the trophy on The Australian tour of England and Ireland. The English cricket team also enjoys rivalries against India and the West Indies, although the latter is no longer as fierce as it was during its peak in the 1980s.

England is also a pioneering nation in the sport of Indoor Cricket. The first organised indoor cricket league in the world took place in 1970 in North Shropshire, and the first national tournament was completed in 1976 with over 400 clubs taking part. By 1979 over 1000 clubs were taking part in indoor cricket in the UK, and it remains extremely popular today with many leagues around the country.

Ice Hockey is Britain's largest indoor spectator sport. It has a long history in the UK and it is reasonably well supported, with the larger teams attracting thousands of fans to every game. The main league is the ten-team professional Elite League, which has featured many former NHL players, predominantly during the NHL lockout season. At the moment the Great Britain men's national ice hockey team is in division 1 of the Ice Hockey World Championships. The team is ranked 23rd in the world in the IIHF World Ranking system.

Media support for ice hockey has improved on a national level, although the majority of news is still found on the internet. Sky Sports has been covering the Elite league for a few seasons, and starting in the 2010/2011 season they will be showing 8 live games and a highlight show every week; the reason this deal happened was due to the elite league attracting very large viewing figures and Sky seeing the Elite Ice Hockey League as a potentially big and popular league.

The Elite Ice Hockey League is well recognised around the ice hockey world, so much so that on 2 October 2010 the Boston Bruins of the NHL took on the Belfast Giants at the Giants Odyssey Arena in Belfast, Northern Ireland

Basketball is a minor sport in England. As of the 2006-07 season the top level league is the ten team British Basketball League and second league is the twelve team English Basketball League. The teams are professional or semi-professional but have modest resources. Great Britain men's national basketball team, which was formed by the national basketball organisations of England, Scotland and Wales on 1 December 2005, have not achieved any notable success. Great Britain qualified for the 2009 European basketball championship after 28 years absence from any major international basketball event for any of the Great Britain's countries' national teams. At Eurobasket 2011 Great Britain recorded their first Eurobasket win en route to a 2–3 record, finishing 13th out of 24 teams.

On 13 March 2011, Fiba voted 17-3 in favour of Great Britain receiving their host nation spot at the 2012 Olympic games with one condition, they have until 30 June 2012 to decide on whether to merge the three nations that make up the team or disband after the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

Hockey is a moderately popular recreational sport in England. The Great Britain women's hockey team won the 2016 Rio Olympics with over 10 million viewers on TV, the men's team won the hockey tournament at the 1988 Olympics. Women's hockey at International, Premier League and Conference League level is sponsored by Investec. The Men's England Hockey League and Women's England Hockey League contain very high levels of club hockey ability and usually at least two clubs from both the men's and women's leagues proceed to European Competitions. Each week highlights of that weeks games get posted on YouTube.

Hockey's popularity is rising fast with the women winning the Rio Olympics in 2016 and the men winning the Azlan Shah Cup in 2017. The sport has a great future and will continue to grow with hopefully more success to grow on the success already seen in the international are and the club leagues.

Lacrosse in England is played in both the men's (field & indoor) and women's (field) versions of the games and governed by English Lacrosse Association. Currently the England men's team are European champions and are ranked fifth in the world. The women's team are currently second in Europe (however have won the competition three out of the seven times it has been competed for); they are also ranked fourth in the World (having won silver in both the 1987 and 1991 World Championships).

England is seen as one of the birthplaces of bandy, beside Russia (where a similar game developed simultaneously). The match which later has been dubbed the original bandy match was held in London in 1875. England won the 1913 European Bandy Championships in Davos, Switzerland. Following the outbreak of the First World War, the interest for bandy vanished in England and the National Bandy Association was discontinued. Almost a hundred years later, bandy was reintroduced to England and the Bandy Federation of England was founded in 2010, changing names to Great Britain Bandy Federation in 2017. England now has both a men's national team and a women's national team, which hopefully will compete in the future World Championships.

American football was introduced to England during the early part of the 20th century by American servicemen stationed in the country. During the Second World War, matches were played by American and Canadian servicemen stationed in the UK at venues throughout the country. This included the 'Tea Bowl' game played at the White City Stadium in 1944.

In England, Scotland and Wales, the domestic game is organised by the British American Football Association (BAFA), who operate a series of league competitions as the BAFA National Leagues. The championship game is known as the BritBowl.

Australian rules football has a long but obscure history in England but has grown since 1989 to several amateur leagues. England regularly plays international matches against other countries and competes in the Australian Football International Cup as a part of the Great Britain national Australian rules football team.
Australian Football League exhibition matches have been held in London every few years since 1972 (see Australian rules football in England).

The Irish sports of Gaelic football and hurling are also organised on a similar basis. Dating back to the 1880s London GAA teams compete in top-level competitions in Ireland. During the 1970s, and 1980s there were as many as 85 GAA clubs in the London area and hundreds around Britain, but due to the fall-off in Irish immigration in the 1990s the number has fallen considerably.

Commonwealth Games England (CGE) is a sports governing body that leads and manages the participation of the England team at the Commonwealth Games.

Tennis is the largest individual sport in England in terms of registered players and viewing audiences. Every year The Wimbledon Championships take place in London. They are the most prestigious tennis championships in the world and attract the largest global audience.

England does not compete at the Olympic Games instead English athletes compete as part of Great British team, Team GB. London (the Capital of England and the UK) hosted the Summer Olympics in 1908, 1948 and 2012 making it the first city in the world to host the Summer Olympics three times.

Various athletics events which are individualistic are viewed as popular in England. In August 2014 Mo Farah became the most successful athlete in the European Athletics Championships history.

England has produced many squash world number ones, and has been known to dominate the world rankings.

Badminton is England's most popular racket sport. It is an accessible sport where beginners can experience success early through basic rallying, but at the top level it requires high levels of power, agility and endurance. Badminton is an Olympic sport and Great Britain achieved medal success in both Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004. The All-England Championships takes place in Birmingham every year and attracts all the top players from around the world.

Although originating in Scotland, England has played a major role in the development of golf, including the origins of the Professional Golfers' Association (Great Britain & Ireland). Major golf tournaments held in England include the Open Championship (an English course hosting the event two years in every five) and the BMW PGA Championship, the flagship event of the European Tour. The Ryder Cup also originated in England, with the event being held on English courses numerous times.

The majority of the Formula One teams are based in England. Drivers from England have won eight Formula One World Championship drivers titles. Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button are the most notable current English drivers, with Hamilton having won five championships (most recently in 2018) and Button having claimed the crown in 2009. The British Grand Prix takes place at Silverstone, most frequently in July. Major motor racing series based in the UK include the British Formula Three Championship and the British Touring Car Championship.

English drivers (most notably Richard Burns) have achieved success in the World Rally Championship. Since 2000 the British Superbike Championship has become increasingly popular, surpassing its four-wheeled rivals in terms of spectator receipts and television coverage. Britain hosts one round of the MotoGP championship at Silverstone, and one of the Superbike World Championship at Donington Park in 2018 but has previously visited Brands Hatch and Silverstone.

England is commonly seen as the widely dominant country for building racing cars. In addition to Formula One successes, historic names such as Lola, March, Reynard and Chevron have supplied numerous teams. Universities offering motorsport courses always back up this claim. Between the mid-1980s to the 1990s cars built in Britain were widely dominant in CART racing and the Indianapolis 500 in the United States.

England played a key role in the evolution of modern boxing, with the codification of the rules of the sport known as the Queensberry Rules in the 19th century.

British professional boxing offers some of the largest purses outside the United States to a few elite professional boxers who become nationally known. British heavyweight contenders are especially popular, but most British world champions have fought in the middling weight brackets. The governing body of professional boxing is the British Boxing Board of Control. It is generally felt that British professional boxing is in decline in the early years of the 21st century. The reasons for this include: the fact that football now offers a relatively large number of sportsmen the chance to make the sort of income traditionally only available to world boxing champions, reducing the incentive for athletic youngsters to accept the greater risks of a boxing career; the acquisition of the rights to most major fights by Sky Sports, which means that fewer boxers become national figures than in the past; and the knock the sport's credibility has taken from the multiplicity of title sanctioning bodies.

Amateur boxing is governed by the Amateur Boxing Association of England (ABA) and the equivalent bodies in the other home nations. British amateurs have only enjoyed a very modest amount of success in international competition in recent decades, partly due to the tendency for them to turn professional at an early stage. The amateur sport is in a very poor state, with dramatic declines in boxer numbers. National amateur boxing championships and international team matches, which were once highlights of the British sporting calendar, receive only limited national recognition.

Mixed martial arts (MMA) has come a huge way. The sport was on the verge of being sent into oblivion in the early 1990s but has since clawed its way back and become one of the most popular sports in the USA.

In Great Britain MMA failed to capitalise on this momentum and has not seen anywhere near the popularity levels MMA has received in USA. However, things slowly started to change when Michael Bisping came onto the scene and won "The Ultimate Fighter 3" and earned a six-figure contract to the UFC. Bisping built UK MMA a bit quicker alongside Ross Pearson and James Wilks, the two winners of. Bisping coached Team UK. After that "TUF" season, MMA in the UK began to build. UK MMA is being pushed further with the likes of Dan Hardy, Brad Pickett, John Hathaway, Jimi Manuwa, Rosi Sexton, and Luke Barnatt. MMA was also boosted in the UK on. The show saw the UK vs Australia. It was an MMA spin-off of The Ashes.

At UFC 111, in Newark, New Jersey, Nottingham's Dan Hardy fought Canada's Georges St-Pierre for the UFC Welterweight Championship on 27 March 2010, becoming the first UK fighter to fight for a UFC title in the history of the organisation. Hardy lost the fight via unanimous decision. St-Pierre took Hardy down and controlled him with effective ground and pound. St-Pierre secured a tight armbar and kimura on Hardy in rounds 1 and 4. Hardy refused to tap, however, despite the danger of his arm being broken.

After a huge win in London against Anderson Silva, Michael Bisping finally got his long-awaited UFC title fight in a rematch against Luke Rockhold at UFC 199 at The Forum in Inglewood, California, who submitted Bisping at on 7 November 2014 in Sydney, Australia with a guillotine choke in round 2. Rockhold was originally set to rematch Chris Weidman, who he took the title from at UFC 194, but, Weidman was forced to withdraw due to a neck injury. The UFC's first choice was Ronaldo Souza but 'Jacaré' was undergoing knee sergury. Therefore, the UFC chose Bisping to face Luke Rockhold for the UFC Middleweight Championship. Despite being 37 years old, with only 2 weeks notice and being a 10/1 underdog, all it took Bisping was a left hook to wobble the Californian with another left after he waited patiently for Rockhold to get back up. Bisping landed 3 strikes after he dropped Rockhold again and referee John McCarthy stopped the fight. Michael Bisping fulfilled his destiny and realised his dream. Bisping was crowned UFC World Middleweight Champion and became the first British World Champion in UFC history.

Other sports with loyal followings include snooker, which is popular with television companies as it fills swathes of their schedules at a very low cost, and also attracts a good number of viewers. However, its popularity has waned somewhat since 1985, when nearly a third of the British population watched the conclusion of the celebrated Dennis Taylor versus Steve Davis World Championship final even though it ended after midnight. Darts is another British-centred sport with an assured place in the attention of the English sporting public. Lawn Bowls is popular, particularly with the elderly. International competitions are often televised.

In the early 20th century England had some of the largest sports facilities in the world, but the level of comfort and amenities they offered would be considered totally unacceptable by modern standards. After a long period of decline relative to other developed countries English facilities have made a relative improvement since the 1980s, and this is ongoing.English football grounds are almost always football-only facilities in which the spectators are close to the action. Since the late 1980s there has been a dramatic spurt of reconstruction and replacement of league grounds, which is ongoing, and the Premiership's facilities are among the best of any sports league. As of early 2005 there are approximately 30 all-seater club grounds in England with a capacity of 25,000 or more, and three in Scotland. The largest is Manchester United's Old Trafford, which has a capacity of 76,000.

English cricket grounds are smaller than the largest in some other countries, especially India and Australia, but the best of them have been modernised to a high standard, and two new international grounds have been built in recent years. The largest English cricket ground, Lord's in London, is internationally regarded as the "home of cricket". Other cricket stadiums in England include The Oval, Headingley Carnegie, Old Trafford Cricket Ground and the Trent Bridge Ground.

Rugby union and rugby league clubs are generally poorer than their cricket and football counterparts. Some clubs have good all seater grounds in the 10,000-25,000 capacity range; some have older grounds which are still partly terraced; and others play in council-owned joint-use stadia (e.g. the KC Stadium). Some clubs (mostly rugby union ones) rent stadia from football clubs. After the Rugby Football League stipulated that all Super League club stadia must meet minimum standards rugby league has seen a marked rise in the quality of the sports venues with many clubs re-locating to new purpose-built facilities or renovating their current grounds.

The Belfry in the English Midlands has hosted the Ryder Cup more times than any other site. Wentworth Club near London used to hold two European Tour events each season, but now hosts just one.

The provision of athletics stadiums in England is very poor compared to most other developed countries. The main reason for this is that it is not considered acceptable to ask football or rugby fans to sit behind an athletics track. This means that athletics stadiums have to be separately financed and this can only be done with public funds, which have not been forthcoming on a large scale. The largest athletics stadium built in the UK between the Second World War and the 2010s, the 38,000-capacity City of Manchester Stadium built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games, was reconfigured for football-only use after that event. The largest existing stadium then became the 25,000-seat Don Valley Stadium in Sheffield. Prior to the 2012 Summer Olympics, London's largest athletics venue was Crystal Palace, which has just 15,500 permanent seats. It has since been superseded by the Olympic Stadium, now known as London Stadium, which was initially built as an 80,000-seater for the 2012 Olympics. The venue was reduced to 60,000 seats following the Games after the London organising committee accepted West Ham United's bid to take over the stadium. As part of the downsizing, movable seating was added to allow optimal configurations for both athletics and football. There are two Athletic stadiums in Birmingham, the Alexander Stadium (12,700 capacity) which is home to UK Athletics, and the National Indoor Arena (14,150) which is also used for other events.

In England there is no indoor sport capable of attracting five-figure attendances on a regular basis, and this restricts the development of large indoor arenas. Nonetheless a number of 10,000+ seater arenas have been built in recent years and more are planned. These facilities make most of their income from pop concerts, but they occasionally stage boxing matches and other sporting events. The largest is the Manchester Evening News Arena in its eponymous city, with a capacity of over 20,000 for court events. The O in London (the former Millennium Dome), reopened in 2007, contains an arena that seats 17,500, but can be reconfigured to seat more than the MEN Arena and the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham which can seat 14,150. There are some specialist ice hockey and basketball arenas, but they only seat a few thousand spectators. Several of the 2012 Olympic arenas will be relocated outside London after the Games.Apart from a couple of Oxbridge events, student sport has a very low profile in England, however, the largest inter-university sports tournament in Europe, the Roses Tournament (often just called 'Roses') is contested between Lancaster University and the University of York annually. While universities have significant sports facilities, there is no system of sports scholarships. However, students who are elite standard competitors are eligible for funding from bodies such as UK Sport on the same basis as anyone else. The university most focused on sports provision is probably Loughborough University. Budding professionals in the traditionally working class team sports of football and rugby league rarely go to university. Talented youngsters in the more middle class sports of cricket and rugby union are far more likely to attend university, but their sports clubs usually play a greater role in developing their talent than their university coaches. Some sports are attempting to adapt to new conditions in which a far higher proportion of English teenagers attend university than in the past, notably cricket, which has established several university centres of excellence.

Sport is compulsory for all students up to the age of sixteen, but the amount of time devoted to it is often small and pupils often find fictitious excuses to avoid doing it.

The leading body for physical education in the United Kingdom is the Association for Physical Education. Sportsmark is Sport England's accreditation scheme for secondary schools. The scheme recognises a school's out of hours sports provision.

There are frequent complaints that state sector schools do too little to encourage sport and a healthy lifestyle. Since the 1980s it has become a cliché to complain about sales of school playing fields for development.

Sports culture is strong in independent schools in the United Kingdom, and these schools contribute disproportionately high numbers of competitors in sports which are traditionally considered 'elitist', such as cricket and rugby union. Participants of other sports, notably association football, rugby league, boxing and athletics, are much more likely to come from state schools.

In addition to many of the sports already mentioned, popular sports at junior level include netball and rounders, both of which are played almost entirely by girls. However, in recent times schoolgirls have increasingly played sports which are traditionally male, especially football and cricket, but also others such as rugby.

Association football is the most popular sport in England, where the first modern set of rules for the code were established in 1863, which were a major influence on the development of the modern Laws of the Game. With over 40,000 association football clubs, England has more clubs involved in the code than any other country as well as the world's first club (Sheffield F.C.), the world's oldest professional association football club (Notts County F.C), the oldest national governing body (the Football Association), the first national team, the oldest national knockout competition (the FA Cup) and the oldest national league (the English Football League). Today England's top domestic league, the Premier League, is one of the most popular and richest sports leagues in the world, with six of the ten richest football clubs in the world.

Football in England

The England national football team is one of only eight teams to win the World Cup, in 1966. A total of five English club teams have won the UEFA Champions League (European Cup).

Football was played in England as far back as medieval times. The first written evidence of a football match came in about 1170, when William Fitzstephen wrote of his visit to London, "After dinner all the youths of the city goes out into the fields for the very popular game of ball." He also went on to mention that each trade had their own team, "The elders, the fathers, and the men of wealth come on horseback to view the contests of their juniors, and in their fashion sport with the young men; and there seems to be aroused in these elders a stirring of natural heat by viewing so much activity and by participation in the joys of unrestrained youth." Kicking ball games are described in England from 1280.

In 1314, Edward II, then the King of England, said about a sport of football and the use of footballs, "certain tumults arising from great footballs in the fields of the public, from which many evils may arise." An account of an exclusively kicking "football" game from Nottinghamshire in the fifteenth century bears similarity to association football. By the 16th centuries references to organised teams and goals had appeared. There is evidence for refereed, team football games being played in English schools since at least 1581. The eighteenth-century Gymnastic Society of London is, arguably, the world's first football club.

The Cambridge rules, first drawn up at Cambridge University in 1848, were particularly influential in the development of subsequent codes, including association football. The Cambridge Rules were written at Trinity College, Cambridge, at a meeting called for by H. de Winton and J. C. Thring from Shrewsbury and attended by representatives from Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester and Shrewsbury. They were not universally adopted. During the 1850s, many clubs unconnected to schools or universities were formed throughout the English-speaking world, to play various forms of football. Some came up with their own distinct codes of rules, most notably, Sheffield Football Club (the world's oldest club), formed by former public school pupils in 1857, which led to formation of the Sheffield & Hallamshire Football Association in 1867. In 1862, John Charles Thring of Uppingham School also devised an influential set of rules. His brother, headmaster of the school Reverend Edward Thring, was a proponent of football as an alternative to masturbation, seen as weakening the boys, and through football hoped to encourage their development of perceived manly attributes which were present in the sport. These ongoing efforts contributed to the formation of The Football Association (The FA) in 1863, which first met on 26 October 1863 at the Freemasons' Tavern in Great Queen Street, London.
The Sheffield FA played by its own rules until the 1870s with the FA absorbing some of its rules until there was little difference between the games. A match between Sheffield and Hallam F.C. on 29 December 1862 was one of the first matches to be recorded in a newspaper.

With the modern passing game believed to have been innovated in London and with England being home to the oldest football clubs in the world dating from at least 1857, the world's oldest football trophy, the Youdan Cup, the first national competition, the FA Cup founded in 1871, and the first ever association football league (1888) as well as England having the first national football team that hosted the world's first ever international football match, a 1–1 draw with Scotland on 5 March 1870 at The Oval in London, England is considered the home of the game of football.
On 8 March 1873, the England national team's 4–2 win over Scotland at the Oval was the first ever victory in international football. The late nineteenth century was dominated by the growing split between the amateur and professional teams, which was roughly aligned along a North-South divide. Northern clubs were keen to adopt professionalism as workers could not afford to play on an amateur basis, while Southern clubs by the large part stuck by traditional "Corinthian" values of amateurism. Eventually, in 1885 the FA legalised professionalism, and when Aston Villa director William McGregor organised a meeting of representatives of England's leading clubs, this led to the formation of the Football League in 1888. Preston North End were inaugural winners in 1888–89, and were also the first club to complete the double of both winning the league and the FA Cup. Aston Villa repeated the feat in 1896–97.

The League expanded over the next 25 years as football boomed in England, from one division of twelve clubs in 1888, to two divisions by the 1892–93 season, with a total of 28 clubs and with the gradual addition of more clubs, a total of 40 by 1905–06. It remained at 40 until the league was suspended after the 1914–15 season with the outbreak of World War I. During this time clubs from the North and Midlands dominated, with Aston Villa, Sunderland, The Wednesday (later renamed Sheffield Wednesday) and Newcastle United all winning three or more league titles in the period leading up to World War I. Other clubs to win league titles in this period include Sheffield United, Manchester United and Everton. London-based clubs enjoyed little success during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with the first major trophy being won by a London-based club being Tottenham Hotspur's FA Cup triumph in 1901, when they were still a Southern Football League club, although they were elected to the Football League soon after.

During the war, competitive football was suspended. However, an unofficial "Wartime Football league" was played from 1915–16 to 1918–19, although the FA Cup was suspended until after the war.

In the 1920–21 season the Football League was expanded, with the new Third Division, which expanded the league south of Birmingham, which until then had been sparsely represented in the Football League. Each division had 22 clubs. The next season the league was again expanded with the Third Division divided into North (with 20 clubs) and South (with 22 clubs) sections, making a total of 86 clubs in the Football League. In the 1923–24 season the Third Division North was expanded to 22 clubs, making a total of 88 league clubs.

After half a century of cup finals and internationals being hosted at various venues across England, the national stadium at Wembley was opened in 1923, with the "White Horse Final" being the first FA Cup final to be played there. Bolton Wanderers defeated West Ham United to win this landmark game. Bolton Wanderers would win the FA Cup on three occasions during the 1920s.

The inter-war years were dominated by Huddersfield Town, Everton and Arsenal, who won eleven of the eighteen league titles contested between them, with Huddersfield and Arsenal each grabbing a three consecutive titles, and Arsenal taking five in total, as well as two FA Cups. Both Huddersfield and Arsenal were managed by Herbert Chapman, who moved from Huddersfield to Arsenal after the Yorkshire club's second successive title, and died just before Arsenal won their third successive title.

By the turn of the 1930s, the national side regularly played against other national teams from outside the British Isles. However, the FA's resignation from FIFA in 1928 meant that England did not contest any of the first three World Cups. The 1939–40 season was abandoned in September 1939 following the outbreak of World War II. However, as with World War I, a special wartime league was played throughout the war years, with the FA Cup again suspended. Ten regional "mini-leagues" were initially established in 1939 as well as the Football League War Cup which ran six seasons from 1939 to 1945 with West Ham United, Preston North End, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Blackpool, and Bolton Wanderers winning the trophy while in 1943–44 Aston Villa and Charlton Athletic shared the trophy after drawing 1–1. Various leagues and cups, mostly on a regional basis, were organised throughout the war years for five seasons until the FA Cup resumed in 1945–46. The Football League returned the following season.

The English national team suffered two shock defeats in the early 1950s: a 1–0 loss to the United States at the 1950 World Cup and a 6–3 defeat to Hungary at Wembley in 1953. However, Wolverhampton Wanderers defeated the Hungarian club Budapest Honvéd, a match which inspired the creation of the European Cup. Chelsea were persuaded against participating in the first season of the European Cup in 1955–56, but Manchester United ignored such advice and went on to reach the semi-final of the 1956–57 edition, losing to the eventual winners Real Madrid. In the following season's European Cup, Manchester United was involved in the Munich Air Disaster: this also affected the national team as three of the players who lost their lives – Roger Byrne, Tommy Taylor and Duncan Edwards – were established England internationals. Their manager Matt Busby was seriously injured but survived; he had already taken United to FA Cup glory in 1948 and another league title triumph in 1952 with an earlier side which featured the likes of Johnny Carey, Jack Rowley and Stan Pearson.

Two English teams, a London XI and Birmingham City, both lost to Barcelona in the first two finals of the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup in 1958 and 1960.

Wolverhampton Wanderers were another highly successful English club side during the postwar years. Under the management of Stan Cullis, they were league champions three times and FA Cup winners twice between 1949 and 1960. Although they failed to make a major impact in either of their European Cup campaigns, they did beat some of European football's most respected club sides in a series of friendlies at Molineux Stadium during the 1950s. Arsenal continued their run of success for several years after the resumption of league football, winning two league titles and an FA Cup between 1948 and 1953. Their North London rivals Tottenham Hotspur won the league title for the first time in 1951, and by the end of the decade were challenging for honours once again under new manager Bill Nicholson and captain Danny Blanchflower. Another London club, Chelsea, won the league title in 1955. Newcastle United were FA Cup winners three times in the 1950s, while Portsmouth won back-to-back league titles in the early postwar years.

The Football League was reorganised for the 1958–59 season with Third Divisions North and South discontinued. The top half of each regional Third Division from the previous season formed a new Third Division, while the lower halves formed the new Fourth Division. Modernisation followed in the 1960s, with revolutions in the game such as the George Eastham case allowing players greater freedom of movement, and the abolition of the maximum wage in 1961.

Tottenham Hotspur became the first club to win the Double in the 20th century in 1960–61, retained the FA Cup the following season, and then became the first English club to win a European trophy, the Cup Winners' Cup in 1962–63 when they beat Atlético Madrid 5–1 in the final. Manager Bill Nicholson then built another successful Tottenham side which lifted a further FA Cup in 1967.

The most marked success of the era, however, was Alf Ramsey's England team, which won the 1966 FIFA World Cup on home soil after controversially beating West Germany 4–2 after extra time, the only time the national team has won the trophy.

In the late 1960s English clubs dominated the last years of the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, with wins for Leeds United, Newcastle United and Arsenal. Manchester United became the first English club to win the European Cup in 1967–68 when they beat Benfica 4–1 at Wembley in the final. Liverpool (four), Nottingham Forest (two), and Aston Villa (one) won the European Cup in a successful period between 1977 and 1984.

The first half of the 1960s saw the promotion of two sides to the First Division who would achieve great success as this level for many years afterwards: Liverpool (in 1962) and Leeds United (in 1964). Liverpool, managed by Bill Shankly, won the league title in 1964, two seasons after promotion, and followed this up with their first-ever FA Cup triumph a year later and a further league title in 1966. Among their players was Roger Hunt, who played in attack for England's World Cup winning side of 1966. Leeds United had appointed Don Revie, an FA Cup winner for Manchester City as a player in 1956, as their new manager in 1961, and he guided them to promotion in 1964. A year after promotion, they only missed out on the league title on goal average, finally winning it in 1969, by which time they had already won the Football League Cup and Inter-Cities Fairs Cup.

Manchester United also faced competition from their local rivals Manchester City, who overcame a dismal first half of the decade (which included three seasons in the Second Division) to pip United to the league title in 1968, win the FA Cup in 1969 and claim their first piece of European silverware in 1970 when they lifted the European Cup Winners' Cup.

West Ham United also played a major role in English football in the 1960s. They won their first silverware in 1964 when they won the FA Cup, and went on to win the European Cup Winners' Cup a year later. In 1966, they provided three key players in England's World Cup winning side – goalscorers Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters as well as captain Bobby Moore.

Liverpool enjoyed even more success during the 1970s. They won a further league title, FA Cup and the UEFA Cup before the retirement of Bill Shankly as manager in 1974. His successor Bob Paisley took Liverpool to even greater heights; by the end of the decade, he had guided them to three league titles, another UEFA Cup triumph, and the clubs first two European Cups. Liverpool's local rivals Everton, who had been league champions in 1963 and FA Cup winners in 1966, began the 1970s by winning another league titles, but failed to add any silverware to their list of honours for the rest of the decade, although they did hold onto their place in the First Division. Arsenal started the 1970s on a winning note by lifting the penultimate Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, and then became the second team of the 20th century to win the double when they clinched the league title and FA Cup in 1971. Their next major trophy came in 1979, when they fought off a late revival from Manchester United at Wembley to win the FA Cup final 3–2.

Leeds United added a further league title and Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, as well as their first FA Cup, before Don Revie departed to take over as manager of the England national football team in the summer of 1974, after the Football Association terminated Sir Alf Ramsey's contract after 11 years, following England's failure to qualify for the World Cup.

Although Leeds United were still in the First Division at the decade's end, they failed to win any trophies after Revie left the club. The England team, meanwhile, continued to struggle, failing to qualify for the 1978 World Cup, with Revie defecting to coach the United Arab Emirates side just before this latest disappointment. Things began turn around under his successor Ron Greenwood, who ended the decade by securing England's qualification for the 1980 European Championships, the first major tournament England had qualified for in 10 years.

Derby County, promoted to the First Division in 1969 after a lengthy absence, emerged as a force during the 1970s, winning the league title in 1972 under the controversial but effective management of Brian Clough, and again in 1975 under Clough's successor Dave Mackay. Clough, after a disastrous 44-day spell as Don Revie's successor at Leeds United, enjoyed even greater success at Nottingham Forest, taking the East Midlands club to promotion in 1977, the league title and League Cup in 1978 and to a further League Cup and the European Cup in 1979, before retaining their European crown in 1980. During this run of outstanding success, Clough also shelled out British football's first £1million transfer fee for the Birmingham City forward Trevor Francis, who signed for Forest in February 1979. Also among his acquisitions was the goalkeeper Peter Shilton, who went on to win a record of 125 full caps for England.
The rise of football hooliganism marred the game throughout the 1970s and 1980s, which contributed to a decline in match attendance. Other factors in falling attendances were the dismal economic conditions and rising unemployment which plagued the British economy for most of the 1970s and into the 1980s, with many clubs in the north of England being hit particularly hard.

Many of English football's most famous and successful clubs reached low ebbs during the 1970s and 1980s, in many cases at least partly due to financial problems. Preston North End and Blackpool both fell into the Fourth Division and had to apply for re-election to the Football League between 1982 and 1986. Wolverhampton Wanderers found themselves on the verge of closure twice during the 1980s and suffered three successive relegations which pushed them into the Fourth Division in 1986. Their local rivals Birmingham City dropped into the Third Division for the first time in 1989. Sunderland suffered the same fate as Birmingham two years previously, but achieved promotion at the first attempt and were soon challenging for a return to the First Division, while Wolves ended the decade back in the Second Division after two successive promotions. Bolton Wanderers, four times FA Cup winners, were relegated to the Fourth Division in 1987, but were promoted at the first time of asking.

In August 1974, a Blackpool fan was stabbed to death at the back of the Spion Kop, Bloomfield Road at Blackpool's home match with Bolton Wanderers. It was widely reported as being the first hooligan death at an English football match, and other clubs who gained notorious reputations for hooliganism during the 1970s and 1980s included Chelsea, Millwall, West Ham United, and Leeds United. The nadir came in May 1985, when Liverpool fans hooliganism, combined with poor policing and infrastructure, led to the deaths of 39 Juventus fans before the European Cup final, in the Heysel Stadium disaster. The sequel to the tragedy was a ban on English clubs in European competitions, which was not lifted for five years. Due to the ban, many English star players transferred to continental clubs. England's ageing and poorly built stadiums were responsible for two disasters, at Bradford in May 1985 (just before the Heysel tragedy) and Hillsborough in April 1989, resulting in the deaths of 56 and 96 people respectively.

In 1986–87 automatic promotion and relegation between the Football League and non-league was introduced, with the bottom club in the league being relegated to the Conference. The first club to suffer automatic relegation from the Football League was Lincoln City, who were replaced by the GM Vauxhall Conference champions Scarborough, only to regain their league status a year later. That first relegation place in 1987 had very nearly been occupied by Burnley, league champions 27 years earlier and First Division members until just over a decade earlier, but victory in their final league game of the season secured their league survival.

Another major change which took place in English football during the second half of the 1980s was a restructuring of the divisions. During the 1986 close season, the Football League decided to reduce the First Division to 21 clubs for the 1987–88 season and finally to 20 clubs for the 1988–89 season, while the Second Division would be increased to 23 and finally to 24 clubs in the process. End-of-season promotion/relegation playoffs were introduced for these two transitional seasons, before the playoffs were established as promotion-only deciders from the end of the 1988–89 season onwards, with the previously two-legged final being altered to a single match at Wembley from 1990 onwards.

The 1970s saw the FA Cup won twice by Second Division clubs, the first time in the postwar era that the trophy had been won by a club outside the First Division. First, Sunderland lifted the trophy in 1973 at the expense of Leeds United. Three years later, Southampton defeated Manchester United to claim the first silverware of their history. In 1980, the trophy was won by a Second Division club for the third time in eight seasons when West Ham United triumphed over holders Arsenal.

The 1980s saw five different clubs reach the First Division for the first time. In 1981, Swansea City reached the First Division after climbing from the Fourth Division in just four seasons – the fastest rise of any club throughout the league at the time. They topped the First Division more than once during the 1981–82 season before finishing sixth. However, Swansea's successive story was short-lived, and their second season among the elite ended in relegation, and by 1986 they were back in the Fourth Division, having narrowly avoided going out of business. In 1982, Watford reached the First Division under the chairmanship of Elton John, management of Graham Taylor, and with the scoring prowess of Luther Blissett and John Barnes in attack. They finished runners-up in the league in their first top division season and were FA Cup runners-up in their second, and survived in the First Division until 1988. Taylor later managed the England team, while Barnes went on to help Liverpool win five major trophies and was a regular member of the England side for the second half of the 1980s and into the 1990s. 1985 saw the promotion of Oxford United to the First Division, 23 years after being elected to the Football League. They survived for three seasons in the First Division and won the League Cup in their first season among the elite. An even bigger success story emerged soon after Oxford's First Division arrival, when Wimbledon won promotion to the First Division in 1986, a mere nine years after being elected to the Football League. They quickly established themselves in the First Division, finishing sixth in their first season at this level, and even more impressively won the FA Cup a year later, beating league champions Liverpool 1–0 in the Wembley final. Wimbledon would enjoy the longest stay in the top flight of any of the First Division's new arrivals of the 1980s, retaining their tenancy at this level for 14 years. 1988 saw Millwall reach the First Division for the first time. Tipped by many to go straight back down, they actually topped the First Division briefly in its early stages before finishing 10th – the lowest position they occupied all season. They briefly went top of the league again during the second month of the following season, but finished the season relegated after just two seasons in the First Division.

Eventually, promotion and relegation between the Conference and the Football League was increased to two clubs in 2002–03. In the 1980s, play-offs were introduced throughout the Football League for promotion each season, with one club each season being promoted via the end of season play-offs in addition to those clubs promoted automatically.

Liverpool remained the most successful club side in England during the 1980s, winning the league title six times and the FA Cup twice (including the double in 1986). They also won four successive League Cups, and before the Heysel disaster they won the European Cup in 1981 and again in 1984, bringing their total number of victories in European football's biggest competition to four.

Everton also enjoyed a resurgence in the 1980s. Following the appointment of Howard Kendall as manager in 1981 and the signing of inspirational striker Andy Gray in November 1983, Everton won the FA Cup in 1984 and enjoyed even more success a year later, when they lifted the league title and their first European trophy – the European Cup Winners' Cup. Although they failed to win any trophies in 1986, they did finish runners-up to Liverpool in the league and reached the FA Cup final, where they lost 3–1 to their close neighbours, in a season where Gray's successor in attack, Gary Lineker, found the net more than 40 times in all competitions. Despite the sale of Lineker to Barcelona in the summer of 1986, Everton retained their league title the following season.

Manchester United endured a difficult time in the 1970s following the retirement of Matt Busby as manager. They suffered relegation to the Second Division in 1974, but achieved instant promotion and went on to win the FA Cup in 1977. The 1980s brought more success for the club, who won the FA Cup in 1983 and again in 1985 under the management of Ron Atkinson. They were captained by Bryan Robson, who also captained the England team for much of the decade, and had been Britain's most expensive footballer on his £1.5million arrival at the club in October 1981. Atkinson was succeeded by Alex Ferguson as manager in November 1986, but by the end of the decade United had gone more than 20 years without winning the league title, although they had finished in the top four on no less than seven times during the decade.

Tottenham Hotspur also enjoyed success during the 1970s and 1980s. They won the League Cup twice during the early 1970s as well as the inaugural UEFA Cup in 1972, but suffered relegation to the First Division in 1977. They achieved instant promotion under recently appointed manager Keith Burkinshaw, who then guided Spurs to back-to-back FA Cups and then another UEFA Cup triumph before stepping down as manager in 1984. Their North London rivals Arsenal won the League Cup in 1987 and ended their 18-year wait for the league title in 1989, when they beat Liverpool at Anfield in the final minute of the last game of the season to clinch the championship trophy on goal difference.

The summer of 1988 saw the first £2million+ transfer fees paid by British clubs. Tottenham Hotspur signed 21-year-old PFA Young Player of the Year Paul Gascoigne from Newcastle United, before Everton swooped for high-scoring forward Tony Cottee from West Ham United. After spending an unsuccessful season in Italy with Juventus, Ian Rush headed back to Liverpool for a second spell with the club he had scored more than 200 goals from during his first spell there.

The England team made considerable progress during the 1980s after the barren performances of the previous decade, qualifying for every major tournament between 1980 and 1990, with the exception of the 1984 European Championships, although their best run in any of these competitions was a quarter-final appearance at the 1986 World Cup.

The post-Hillsborough Taylor Report forced the conversion of major to all-seater, which was a requirement at all clubs in the top divisions by the 1994–95 season. At the same time, the money from television coverage was increasing rapidly, due to England reaching the semi-finals of the 1990 World Cup and a concerted effort to drive out hooliganism reinvigorated the national game. The ban on English clubs in European competitions was lifted in July 1990, although Liverpool still had to serve an additional year and it would be a further five years before all of the English places in European competitions were restored.

Manchester United marked a winning return for English clubs in European competitions by winning the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1991, having lifted the FA Cup a year earlier. Enjoying a run of success under Alex Ferguson, they clinched the League Cup in the 1991–92 season, although a shortage of goals in the second half of that season did cost them the league title, which was instead won by a resurgent Leeds United. Liverpool also enjoyed a good start to the 1990s, winning their 18th league title in 1990, but were then stunned by the resignation of Kenny Dalglish as manager in February 1991. His successor Graeme Souness, who had enjoyed great success with the club as a player a decade earlier, guided the Reds to FA Cup glory in 1992.

Arsenal, the 1989 champions of the English First Division, won another league title in 1991, losing just once all season. The FA Cup also headed to North London that year, although it was won by Tottenham Hotspur, who lifted the trophy for a record eighth time.

In the 1991–92 season, following two years of widespread speculation about the leading clubs of English football forming a breakaway league from the Football League, the 22 clubs competing in the First Division resigned "en masse" from the Football League, forming a new top-level competition, The FA Premier League, overseen by the FA, largely to capitalise upon their status as the biggest and most wealthy clubs in the country, and negotiate more profitable television rights.

The new league came into force for the 1992–93 season. Its first champions were Manchester United, who ended their 26-year wait for a top division title, while Aston Villa came second and Norwich City third.

The Football League was consequently reorganised, with the Second, Third and Fourth Divisions renamed as the First, Second and Third Divisions respectively. Thus, the First Division, while still the top level of the Football League, became the second level of the entire English football league system with the top clubs inheriting the promotion play-off system from the old Second Division. The Premier League was reduced to 20 teams after the 1994-95 season. The Premier League has been won by 6 clubs in its 24 seasons, with Manchester United winning on 13 occasions. They have set many precedents in the process, becoming the first team to win a second double of the league title and FA Cup in 1996 (their first double being won in 1994), and in 1999 they won a unique treble of the league title, FA Cup and European Cup.

English clubs have also won European tournaments since being permitted to compete after the Heysel disaster, the first English team to win the UEFA Champions League being Manchester United in 1999. The 2008 final, for the first time, was played between two English teams, Manchester United and Chelsea. Manchester United won the final in Moscow on penalties after a 1–1 draw.

The early Premier League years saw the transfer record fee in English football broken many times in a relatively short period of time, and rise at a rate barely comparable with even that of the late 1970s. The biggest fee paid by an English club during the Football League era was the £2.9million paid by Liverpool for Dean Saunders in July 1991. The national record was broken the following summer when Blackburn Rovers paid £3.3million for Alan Shearer. The national record was broken again in June 1993 when Manchester United signed Roy Keane for £3.75million. Blackburn then broke the national record in the 1994 close season by signing 21-year-old Norwich City striker Chris Sutton for £5million. In 1995, the record fee was broken three times in the space of six months. At the turn of the year, Andy Cole arrived at Manchester United in a deal worth £7million. After the season's end, Arsenal paid £7.5million to Inter Milan for Dutch forward Dennis Bergkamp, but Bergkamp had just spent days with his new club when Liverpool paid £8.5million for Nottingham Forest striker Stan Collymore. A year later, Alan Shearer became the most expensive player not only in England but in the world when he left Blackburn Rovers to sign for Newcastle United in a £15million deal. This fee, however, remained unsurpassed for more than four years.

Premier League clubs have been increasingly successful at attracting foreign players, particularly since the removal of the limit on fielding players from common market countries in the mid 1990s.

Despite the dominance of Manchester United for most of the Premier League era, a number of other clubs have enjoyed considerable success since 1992. Although Liverpool have not won a league title since 1990, they have won a further two FA Cups, four League Cups, a UEFA Cup and a European Cup. The first team to interrupt Manchester United's dominance were Blackburn Rovers, who won the third Premier League title by a single point in 1995. They had only returned to the top flight of English football in 1992, in time for the new league's formation, after a 26-year exile, bankrolled by the wealth of steel baron owner Jack Walker, who had enabled Blackburn to compete for some of the best players in English football. However, Blackburn failed to remain competitive with the best English clubs, their only subsequent major trophy being the League Cup in 2002, and they have never finished higher than sixth in the Premier League since their 1995 title triumph. They endured a two-year exile from the Premier League after being relegated in 1999, and since their second relegation in 2012 they have still yet to gain promotion. Under Arsène Wenger, Arsenal have so far been Premier League champions three times; in 1998, 2002 and 2004. On the first two occasions, they completed the double of the league title and FA Cup, while on the third occasion they won the title without losing a single league game all season. Chelsea made history in 1997 when they won the FA Cup under Dutch manager Ruud Gullit, the first foreign manager to win a major trophy in English football. They won the European Cup Winners' Cup and League Cup a year later under Gullit's successor Gianluca Vialli, who added a further FA Cup in 2000. Chelsea's biggest successes however, have come since the arrival of new Russian owner Roman Abramovich in June 2003 and the appointment of Portuguese coach José Mourinho as manager 12 months later. Mourinho was in charge for more than three years until his sudden departure from the club in September 2007, before returning for a second spell as manager six years later (which lasted two years before getting sacked in December 2015). In the interim, Chelsea were managed by seven different managers over the course of six seasons, but continued to win trophies on a regular basis. Since Abramovich's takeover of Chelsea, the West London club have been Premier League champions four times, FA Cup winners four times and League Cup winners three times, and have also won the European Cup and the Europa League (formerly the UEFA Cup). Manchester City, bankrolled since August 2008 by wealthy Arab owners, ended their 35-year wait for a major trophy by winning the FA Cup in 2011, and then won their first league title in 44 years the following season, both under the management of Italian coach Roberto Mancini. His Chilean successor Manuel Pellegrini became the first non-European manager to win a major trophy in English football when he guided City to the Premier League title and the League Cup in 2014. After narrowly avoiding relegation the previous season, outsiders Leicester City won an unprecedented league title in 2016, having never previously won the top flight title. The winning squad was worth just one-tenth of that of Manchester City's.

Leeds United, the last champions of English football before the creation of the Premier League, played in the first 12 seasons of the Premier League, peaking at third place in 2000, before being relegated in 2004 in the midst of a serious financial crisis which was the direct result of heavy spending on players in the previous few seasons and a failure to net the extra revenue that successful challenges for domestic and European silverware would have brought them. They have yet to return to the Premier League more than a decade later, and even spent three seasons in the league's third tier. A spectacular decline in similar circumstances also befell Portsmouth, who reached the Premier League in 2003 and stayed there for seven seasons, lifting the FA Cup in 2008. The South Coast club were relegated from the Premier League at the end of the 2009–10 season, having become the first club at this level to enter administration, and were deducted nine points at a result. In 2013, a third relegation in four seasons saw them relegated to the league's fourth tier for the first time in 35 years.

Since the creation of the Premier League, a number of England's leading clubs have relocated to new stadiums. After several smaller clubs adopted this approach rather than update their ageing homes in the late 1980s and early 1990s, newly promoted Middlesbrough became the first top flight club to relocate to a new stadium when they moved into the Riverside Stadium for the 1995–96 season, ending a 92-year residence of Ayresome Park. Two years later, Middlesbrough's north-east rivals Sunderland left their historic Roker Park home for the new 42,000-seat Stadium of Light (which has since been expanded to hold nearly 50,000 seated fans) on the banks of the River Wear. Also in 1997, Derby County, Stoke City and Bolton Wanderers all moved into new all-seater stadiums.

A number of clubs who initially chose to convert their existing homes into all-seater stadiums went on to relocate to new stadiums to gain a larger capacity from the turn of the 21st century, particularly those who had progressed throughout the league and attracted a higher demand for tickets since the early 1990s. Southampton relocated to St Mary's Stadium in 2001 after more than 100 years at The Dell, with their new 32,000-seat stadium holding more than twice as many fans as their previous home had during its final years, as an all-seater stadium. Leicester City relocated to the Walkers Stadium (now known as the King Power Stadium) in 2002 after 111 years at Filbert Street. Having originally decided to stay at Maine Road, which was redeveloped to hold 35,000 seated fans by 1995, Manchester City moved into the City of Manchester Stadium (built for the previous year's Commonwealth games) at the start of the 2003–04 season. Arsenal had converted Highbury into an all-seater stadium capable of holding just under 39,000 fans by 1993, but within five years the club's owners had decided that such a capacity was inadequate and, after local residents objected to any expansion of Highbury (parts of which were listed structures) and a bid to buy Wembley Stadium from the Football Association was rejected, decided to build a new stadium at nearby Ashburton Grove. Their new stadium, the Emirates Stadium, was completed in time for the 2006–07 season, holding more than 60,000 spectators.

Wembley Stadium had been converted to an all-seater format by 1989, but its capacity was reduced to 78,000 from its previous capacity of 100,000. By the mid 1990s, plans were afoot for refurbishment or complete reconstruction of the stadium. The eventual plan was for the old stadium to be demolished and a completely new 90,000-seat stadium to be built in its place. The old stadium finally closed in October 2000 and it was anticipated that the new stadium would be completed in 2003, but a series of delays meant that demolition of the old stadium did not take place for two years after the last game was played, and the new Wembley was not opened until March 2007.

West Ham United moved from the Boleyn Ground into the ~60,000 capacity Olympic Stadium at the end of the 2015-16 season.

The English Football League, established in 1888 as The Football League by Aston Villa director William McGregor and renamed "English Football League" in 2016, was the first professional football league in the world. Since its founding, however, many other leagues have been founded in England. Sunday leagues are played each weekend by clubs, the study made by the FA sees to this. Over the years there has been an increasing effort to link all these leagues together in a Pyramidal structure allowing promotion and relegation between different levels. The primary motivation for this drive is to maintain the possibility that any club in England may dream of one day rising to the very top, no matter what status they currently hold. In a study made by FIFA in 2006 there are around 40,000 clubs registered with the FA, which is 11,000 more than any other country, the closest being the Brazilian Football Confederation who have 29,000 registered clubs. Even without taking relative population into account, England has more football clubs than any other country in the world.

The Premier League was founded in 1992 after England's top clubs broke away from the Football League in a successful effort aimed at increasing their income at the expense of clubs in the lower divisions. Links with The Football League were maintained, and each season the bottom three clubs are relegated from the Premier League and replaced by the top three from the Championship. The Premier League is contested between 20 clubs each season. Each club in the Premier League in any given season owns one twentieth of a share in the league itself, meaning that they are all supposedly equal owners with equal rights and responsibilities. Bobby Zamora (English footballer) and Obafemi Martins (Nigerian footballer) are the only two players who have scored penalties with both their feet in the Premier League.

Although the oldest league in the world, the English Football League (EFL) now ranks second in the hierarchy of English football since the split of England's top clubs in 1992 to form the FA Premier League. The EFL has 72 member clubs evenly divided among three divisions, currently named the Championship, League One and League Two. Despite the organisational split, promotion and relegation of clubs still takes place between the Premier League and the EFL.

Below the EFL is what is commonly known as "nonleague", examples include Bath City and FC Halifax Town. This term can be confusing, as it refers to those clubs outside the EFL, although they still play in organised league competitions. In recent years, the top few levels have been consolidated into the National League System, operated by the FA. Most clubs in the top flight of the NLS, the National League division, are fully professional; the remainder are semi-professional.

There is promotion and relegation between League Two and the National League, and for several levels below that, although this becomes more irregular further down the league system. The non-League system is often known as the "pyramid", because the number of leagues at each level begins to increase the further down through the levels, with each league covering a smaller geographic area.

Although the FA abandoned a formal definition of "amateur" in the early 1970s, the vast majority of clubs still effectively play as amateurs, with no financial reward and the leagues are not part of the National League System.

The various County Football Associations, which are based roughly on the historic county boundaries, are the local governing bodies of football in England. They govern all aspects of Sunday league football. Not all County Football Associations are run on county basis. Each armed service has one, for instance such as the Army Football Association which administers football within the British Army.
The Amateur Football Alliance (AFA) is the largest organised amateur competition, being particularly strong in the London area. The AFA is also a County Football Association and as such governs leagues such as the Arthurian League which contains two former FA Cup winners, Old Etonians who won the FA Cup twice, in 1879 and 1882 as well as Old Carthusians who were FA Cup winners in 1881.

Sunday league football in England tends to be lower level amateur football, which is also sometimes referred to as Pub League due to the number of public houses who field teams in Sunday leagues. Each local County Football Association governs all aspects of Sunday league football.

Smaller-sided versions of the game such as Five-a-side football are popular. Futsal is also a growing sport in England. These are often played informally, but there are many competitive small-sided leagues running across the country.

The top division for reserve teams of professional clubs is the Premier Reserve League, which was founded in 1999 and is split into Premier Reserve League North and Premier Reserve League South, both with ten participating teams.

Beneath that operate the Central League for Football League clubs reserve teams in the Midlands and North of England, and the Football Combination for clubs from the South of England and Wales.

The Central League was formed in 1911 and currently has 28 teams, split into three divisions – Central, North and South. The winners of each division and the best runner-up compete in the end-of-season play-offs to decide the league champions. Whilst the Central League is for Football League reserve teams, The West Division contains a Manchester City side which uses a mix of reserve team and youth team squad players and in 2007–08 they were Central League champions. The Central League also organises the Central League Cup, although not all clubs enter the cup.

The Football Combination was formed in 1915 and currently has 30 teams. The Combination is also split into three divisions – East, Central and Wales & East. Whilst the majority of teams are Football League reserve teams, the Combination also currently has the reserve teams of three Conference clubs – Forest Green Rovers, Lewes,and Salisbury City. The Football Combination also organises the Combination Challenge Cup, although not all clubs enter the cup.

There is no promotion and relegation between the reserve team leagues. When a first team is relegated from the Premier League, their reserve team withdraws from the Premier Reserve League to either of the other two leagues and is replaced by the reserve team of the club promoted from the Championship.

Below the professional club reserve leagues, many clubs also operate reserve teams, which play in separate Reserve leagues, such as the Lancashire League. Some lower leagues, such as the North West Counties Football League organise their own reserve leagues. And, at some lower levels of the pyramid, reserve teams play against first teams.

Many club sides have youth teams. The top level of youth football is the Premier Academy League, founded in 1997, which is for all Premier League and Football League clubs that have Academy sides. The league, which currently has 40 clubs, is divided into four groups each with ten teams. The winners of each group contest the end-of-season play-offs to decide the league champions.

The second tier youth league is the Football League Youth Alliance, also founded in 1997, in which those Football League clubs that have Centres of Excellence status field their youth teams. The league, which currently has 58 clubs, is divided into four regional conference leagues. The Youth Alliance also operate the annual Youth Alliance Cup.

The FA Youth Cup is a nationwide cup competition for Under-18 teams organised by the FA. Over 400 clubs enter the FA Youth Cup each season.

There are several cup competitions for clubs at different levels of the football pyramid. The two major cup competitions are the FA Cup and the EFL Cup, with the winners of those competitions qualifying for the UEFA Europa League.

There have also been a number of other cup competitions which are no longer run:

From the 2015–16 season, the various permutations allow for a maximum of five English clubs to qualify for the UEFA Champions League and five for the UEFA Europa League. From the 2018-19 season, the top four clubs in Europe's four highest ranked leagues will qualify directly to the group stages. These leagues are currently England, Germany, Italy, and Spain. The minimum quota is for four English clubs to qualify for the UEFA Champions League and three for the UEFA Europa League.

The England national football team represents England in international football. It is one of the two oldest national football teams in the world, the other one being Scotland. England is one of only eight national teams to have won the World Cup and did this in 1966. They are one of the more prominent teams on the global stage, rarely dropping outside of the top ten rankings of both FIFA and Elo. They were the most successful of the Home Nations in the British Home Championship with 54 wins (including 20 shared wins) before the competition was suspended in 1984.

There are also a number of other national teams from the Under-16 team to the Under-21 team, the latter of which is considered to be a feeder team for the national team. In addition there is an England B team which occasionally plays games as support for the national team. The England C team (formerly the England National Game XI and the England Semi-Professional team) represents England at non-league level. They compete annually in the Four Nations Tournament as well as in friendly matches throughout the year.

The first recorded women's football match in England was more than 100 years ago. Women's football was very popular for many years, but it was stopped by a ban made by the Football Association from 1921 to 1962. It is only in recent years that women's football has begun to recover and receive some serious attention with televised matches (such as the FA Women's Cup final and matches of the national team), international games being held at larger stadiums and, to a lesser extent, the comedy film "Bend It Like Beckham".

As with the men's game, the league is organised into a pyramid system. It has nine levels, with the semi-professional FA WSL, launched in 2011, at the top. Unlike the men's pyramid and the lower levels of the women's pyramid, there will be no promotion from or relegation to the former top level, the FA Women's Premier League National Division, until at least the end of the 2012 WSL season. Doncaster Rovers Belles LFC (previously Doncaster Belles LFC) were founded in 1969 and are one of the most successful clubs in England. They are one of only two clubs outside London to have won the FA Women's Premier League National, the other team being Everton LFC. The Belles have also won the FA Women's Cup six times and been runners-up seven times. Fulham LFC were for a number of years the top club in England and were the first club in Europe to turn professional in 2000 before reverting to semi-professional in 2003. Doncaster Rovers Belles and Everton have since become charter members of the WSL.

Arsenal LFC, who turned fully professional not long after Fulham, have dominated the game in England in the 2000s with Everton LFC also successful. Arsenal have won the FA Women's Cup nine times, and also won the FA Women's Premier League National Division ten times and the FA Women's Premier League Cup nine times before the launch of the WSL. They also won the UEFA Women's Cup in the 2006–07 season. In the 2011 season, the first for both the WSL and its cup competition, the FA WSL Continental Cup, Arsenal claimed the league-cup double. Before the launch of the WSL, Everton won the league title once and were runners-up twice. They have also won the FA Women's Cup once and the FA Women's Premier League Cup once.

Burton Brewers 57–0 loss against Willenhall Town on 4 March 2001 in the West Midland Regional Women's Football League, Division One North may be a British record for the biggest defeat in a football match.

Wembley Stadium is the national stadium in England. It is also the largest stadium in the country with a capacity of 90,000. It is owned by the FA and stages England home matches, the FA Cup final and semi-finals, League Cup final, Football League Trophy, FA Trophy, FA Vase as well as the Promotion play-off finals of the Football League and the Conference National. Old Trafford with a capacity of 76,212 is the largest club stadium, with the Emirates Stadium holding 60,355 and St James' Park holding 52,387. All Premier League clubs play in all-seater stadiums. Most professional clubs have either moved to new purpose-built stadiums or redeveloped their stadium. Even at non-league level there have been big improvements with the likes of New Bucks Head the home of Telford United with a capacity of 6,300, being one of the best in non-league and Princes Park with a capacity of 4,100, the home of Dartford, one of the most ecologically sound ever built.
Some clubs moved out of their old stadiums into newly developed council built and owned stadiums, where they are tenants. Clubs include Doncaster Rovers at the Keepmoat Stadium, which is owned by Doncaster Council, and Hull City at the KC Stadium, which is owned by Hull City Council. Coventry City's home ground of the Ricoh Arena was a council-built stadium originally owned jointly by City Council and the Alan Edward Higgs Charity, but it has since been purchased by the rugby union club Wasps. The 92 Club is a society, to be a member of which, a person must attend a football match at the stadium of every current Premier League and Football League club in England and Wales.The following articles detail the major results and events in each season since 1871–72, when the first organised competition, the FA Cup, was created. Seasons in "italics" are wartime seasons, when official national competition was suspended, although regional football continued.

Football in England

Association football is the most popular sport in England, where the first modern set of rules for the code were established in 1863, which were a major influence on the development of the modern Laws of the Game. With over 40,000 association football clubs, England has more clubs involved in the code than any other country as well as the world's first club (Sheffield F.C.), the world's oldest professional association football club (Notts County F.C), the oldest national governing body (the Football Association), the first national team, the oldest national knockout competition (the FA Cup) and the oldest national league (the English Football League). Today England's top domestic league, the Premier League, is one of the most popular and richest sports leagues in the world, with six of the ten richest football clubs in the world.

The England national football team is one of only eight teams to win the World Cup, in 1966. A total of five English club teams have won the UEFA Champions League (European Cup).

Football was played in England as far back as medieval times. The first written evidence of a football match came in about 1170, when William Fitzstephen wrote of his visit to London, "After dinner all the youths of the city goes out into the fields for the very popular game of ball." He also went on to mention that each trade had their own team, "The elders, the fathers, and the men of wealth come on horseback to view the contests of their juniors, and in their fashion sport with the young men; and there seems to be aroused in these elders a stirring of natural heat by viewing so much activity and by participation in the joys of unrestrained youth." Kicking ball games are described in England from 1280.

In 1314, Edward II, then the King of England, said about a sport of football and the use of footballs, "certain tumults arising from great footballs in the fields of the public, from which many evils may arise." An account of an exclusively kicking "football" game from Nottinghamshire in the fifteenth century bears similarity to association football. By the 16th centuries references to organised teams and goals had appeared. There is evidence for refereed, team football games being played in English schools since at least 1581. The eighteenth-century Gymnastic Society of London is, arguably, the world's first football club.

During the war, competitive football was suspended. However, an unofficial "Wartime Football league" was played from 1915–16 to 1918–19, although the FA Cup was suspended until after the war.

In the 1920–21 season the Football League was expanded, with the new Third Division, which expanded the league south of Birmingham, which until then had been sparsely represented in the Football League. Each division had 22 clubs. The next season the league was again expanded with the Third Division divided into North (with 20 clubs) and South (with 22 clubs) sections, making a total of 86 clubs in the Football League. In the 1923–24 season the Third Division North was expanded to 22 clubs, making a total of 88 league clubs.

After half a century of cup finals and internationals being hosted at various venues across England, the national stadium at Wembley was opened in 1923, with the "White Horse Final" being the first FA Cup final to be played there. Bolton Wanderers defeated West Ham United to win this landmark game. Bolton Wanderers would win the FA Cup on three occasions during the 1920s.

The inter-war years were dominated by Huddersfield Town, Everton and Arsenal, who won eleven of the eighteen league titles contested between them, with Huddersfield and Arsenal each grabbing a three consecutive titles, and Arsenal taking five in total, as well as two FA Cups. Both Huddersfield and Arsenal were managed by Herbert Chapman, who moved from Huddersfield to Arsenal after the Yorkshire club's second successive title, and died just before Arsenal won their third successive title.

Two English teams, a London XI and Birmingham City, both lost to Barcelona in the first two finals of the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup in 1958 and 1960.

The Football League was reorganised for the 1958–59 season with Third Divisions North and South discontinued. The top half of each regional Third Division from the previous season formed a new Third Division, while the lower halves formed the new Fourth Division. Modernisation followed in the 1960s, with revolutions in the game such as the George Eastham case allowing players greater freedom of movement, and the abolition of the maximum wage in 1961.

Tottenham Hotspur became the first club to win the Double in the 20th century in 1960–61, retained the FA Cup the following season, and then became the first English club to win a European trophy, the Cup Winners' Cup in 1962–63 when they beat Atlético Madrid 5–1 in the final. Manager Bill Nicholson then built another successful Tottenham side which lifted a further FA Cup in 1967.

The most marked success of the era, however, was Alf Ramsey's England team, which won the 1966 FIFA World Cup on home soil after controversially beating West Germany 4–2 after extra time, the only time the national team has won the trophy.

In the late 1960s English clubs dominated the last years of the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, with wins for Leeds United, Newcastle United and Arsenal. Manchester United became the first English club to win the European Cup in 1967–68 when they beat Benfica 4–1 at Wembley in the final. Liverpool (four), Nottingham Forest (two), and Aston Villa (one) won the European Cup in a successful period between 1977 and 1984.

The first half of the 1960s saw the promotion of two sides to the First Division who would achieve great success as this level for many years afterwards: Liverpool (in 1962) and Leeds United (in 1964). Liverpool, managed by Bill Shankly, won the league title in 1964, two seasons after promotion, and followed this up with their first-ever FA Cup triumph a year later and a further league title in 1966. Among their players was Roger Hunt, who played in attack for England's World Cup winning side of 1966. Leeds United had appointed Don Revie, an FA Cup winner for Manchester City as a player in 1956, as their new manager in 1961, and he guided them to promotion in 1964. A year after promotion, they only missed out on the league title on goal average, finally winning it in 1969, by which time they had already won the Football League Cup and Inter-Cities Fairs Cup.

Manchester United also faced competition from their local rivals Manchester City, who overcame a dismal first half of the decade (which included three seasons in the Second Division) to pip United to the league title in 1968, win the FA Cup in 1969 and claim their first piece of European silverware in 1970 when they lifted the European Cup Winners' Cup.

West Ham United also played a major role in English football in the 1960s. They won their first silverware in 1964 when they won the FA Cup, and went on to win the European Cup Winners' Cup a year later. In 1966, they provided three key players in England's World Cup winning side – goalscorers Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters as well as captain Bobby Moore.

Leeds United added a further league title and Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, as well as their first FA Cup, before Don Revie departed to take over as manager of the England national football team in the summer of 1974, after the Football Association terminated Sir Alf Ramsey's contract after 11 years, following England's failure to qualify for the World Cup.

Although Leeds United were still in the First Division at the decade's end, they failed to win any trophies after Revie left the club. The England team, meanwhile, continued to struggle, failing to qualify for the 1978 World Cup, with Revie defecting to coach the United Arab Emirates side just before this latest disappointment. Things began turn around under his successor Ron Greenwood, who ended the decade by securing England's qualification for the 1980 European Championships, the first major tournament England had qualified for in 10 years.

In 1986–87 automatic promotion and relegation between the Football League and non-league was introduced, with the bottom club in the league being relegated to the Conference. The first club to suffer automatic relegation from the Football League was Lincoln City, who were replaced by the GM Vauxhall Conference champions Scarborough, only to regain their league status a year later. That first relegation place in 1987 had very nearly been occupied by Burnley, league champions 27 years earlier and First Division members until just over a decade earlier, but victory in their final league game of the season secured their league survival.

Another major change which took place in English football during the second half of the 1980s was a restructuring of the divisions. During the 1986 close season, the Football League decided to reduce the First Division to 21 clubs for the 1987–88 season and finally to 20 clubs for the 1988–89 season, while the Second Division would be increased to 23 and finally to 24 clubs in the process. End-of-season promotion/relegation playoffs were introduced for these two transitional seasons, before the playoffs were established as promotion-only deciders from the end of the 1988–89 season onwards, with the previously two-legged final being altered to a single match at Wembley from 1990 onwards.

The 1970s saw the FA Cup won twice by Second Division clubs, the first time in the postwar era that the trophy had been won by a club outside the First Division. First, Sunderland lifted the trophy in 1973 at the expense of Leeds United. Three years later, Southampton defeated Manchester United to claim the first silverware of their history. In 1980, the trophy was won by a Second Division club for the third time in eight seasons when West Ham United triumphed over holders Arsenal.

Eventually, promotion and relegation between the Conference and the Football League was increased to two clubs in 2002–03. In the 1980s, play-offs were introduced throughout the Football League for promotion each season, with one club each season being promoted via the end of season play-offs in addition to those clubs promoted automatically.

Liverpool remained the most successful club side in England during the 1980s, winning the league title six times and the FA Cup twice (including the double in 1986). They also won four successive League Cups, and before the Heysel disaster they won the European Cup in 1981 and again in 1984, bringing their total number of victories in European football's biggest competition to four.

Everton also enjoyed a resurgence in the 1980s. Following the appointment of Howard Kendall as manager in 1981 and the signing of inspirational striker Andy Gray in November 1983, Everton won the FA Cup in 1984 and enjoyed even more success a year later, when they lifted the league title and their first European trophy – the European Cup Winners' Cup. Although they failed to win any trophies in 1986, they did finish runners-up to Liverpool in the league and reached the FA Cup final, where they lost 3–1 to their close neighbours, in a season where Gray's successor in attack, Gary Lineker, found the net more than 40 times in all competitions. Despite the sale of Lineker to Barcelona in the summer of 1986, Everton retained their league title the following season.

Manchester United endured a difficult time in the 1970s following the retirement of Matt Busby as manager. They suffered relegation to the Second Division in 1974, but achieved instant promotion and went on to win the FA Cup in 1977. The 1980s brought more success for the club, who won the FA Cup in 1983 and again in 1985 under the management of Ron Atkinson. They were captained by Bryan Robson, who also captained the England team for much of the decade, and had been Britain's most expensive footballer on his £1.5million arrival at the club in October 1981. Atkinson was succeeded by Alex Ferguson as manager in November 1986, but by the end of the decade United had gone more than 20 years without winning the league title, although they had finished in the top four on no less than seven times during the decade.

Tottenham Hotspur also enjoyed success during the 1970s and 1980s. They won the League Cup twice during the early 1970s as well as the inaugural UEFA Cup in 1972, but suffered relegation to the First Division in 1977. They achieved instant promotion under recently appointed manager Keith Burkinshaw, who then guided Spurs to back-to-back FA Cups and then another UEFA Cup triumph before stepping down as manager in 1984. Their North London rivals Arsenal won the League Cup in 1987 and ended their 18-year wait for the league title in 1989, when they beat Liverpool at Anfield in the final minute of the last game of the season to clinch the championship trophy on goal difference.

The summer of 1988 saw the first £2million+ transfer fees paid by British clubs. Tottenham Hotspur signed 21-year-old PFA Young Player of the Year Paul Gascoigne from Newcastle United, before Everton swooped for high-scoring forward Tony Cottee from West Ham United. After spending an unsuccessful season in Italy with Juventus, Ian Rush headed back to Liverpool for a second spell with the club he had scored more than 200 goals from during his first spell there.

The England team made considerable progress during the 1980s after the barren performances of the previous decade, qualifying for every major tournament between 1980 and 1990, with the exception of the 1984 European Championships, although their best run in any of these competitions was a quarter-final appearance at the 1986 World Cup.

The post-Hillsborough Taylor Report forced the conversion of major to all-seater, which was a requirement at all clubs in the top divisions by the 1994–95 season. At the same time, the money from television coverage was increasing rapidly, due to England reaching the semi-finals of the 1990 World Cup and a concerted effort to drive out hooliganism reinvigorated the national game. The ban on English clubs in European competitions was lifted in July 1990, although Liverpool still had to serve an additional year and it would be a further five years before all of the English places in European competitions were restored.

Manchester United marked a winning return for English clubs in European competitions by winning the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1991, having lifted the FA Cup a year earlier. Enjoying a run of success under Alex Ferguson, they clinched the League Cup in the 1991–92 season, although a shortage of goals in the second half of that season did cost them the league title, which was instead won by a resurgent Leeds United. Liverpool also enjoyed a good start to the 1990s, winning their 18th league title in 1990, but were then stunned by the resignation of Kenny Dalglish as manager in February 1991. His successor Graeme Souness, who had enjoyed great success with the club as a player a decade earlier, guided the Reds to FA Cup glory in 1992.

Arsenal, the 1989 champions of the English First Division, won another league title in 1991, losing just once all season. The FA Cup also headed to North London that year, although it was won by Tottenham Hotspur, who lifted the trophy for a record eighth time.

In the 1991–92 season, following two years of widespread speculation about the leading clubs of English football forming a breakaway league from the Football League, the 22 clubs competing in the First Division resigned "en masse" from the Football League, forming a new top-level competition, The FA Premier League, overseen by the FA, largely to capitalise upon their status as the biggest and most wealthy clubs in the country, and negotiate more profitable television rights.

The new league came into force for the 1992–93 season. Its first champions were Manchester United, who ended their 26-year wait for a top division title, while Aston Villa came second and Norwich City third.

The Football League was consequently reorganised, with the Second, Third and Fourth Divisions renamed as the First, Second and Third Divisions respectively. Thus, the First Division, while still the top level of the Football League, became the second level of the entire English football league system with the top clubs inheriting the promotion play-off system from the old Second Division. The Premier League was reduced to 20 teams after the 1994-95 season. The Premier League has been won by 6 clubs in its 24 seasons, with Manchester United winning on 13 occasions. They have set many precedents in the process, becoming the first team to win a second double of the league title and FA Cup in 1996 (their first double being won in 1994), and in 1999 they won a unique treble of the league title, FA Cup and European Cup.

English clubs have also won European tournaments since being permitted to compete after the Heysel disaster, the first English team to win the UEFA Champions League being Manchester United in 1999. The 2008 final, for the first time, was played between two English teams, Manchester United and Chelsea. Manchester United won the final in Moscow on penalties after a 1–1 draw.

Premier League clubs have been increasingly successful at attracting foreign players, particularly since the removal of the limit on fielding players from common market countries in the mid 1990s.

Since the creation of the Premier League, a number of England's leading clubs have relocated to new stadiums. After several smaller clubs adopted this approach rather than update their ageing homes in the late 1980s and early 1990s, newly promoted Middlesbrough became the first top flight club to relocate to a new stadium when they moved into the Riverside Stadium for the 1995–96 season, ending a 92-year residence of Ayresome Park. Two years later, Middlesbrough's north-east rivals Sunderland left their historic Roker Park home for the new 42,000-seat Stadium of Light (which has since been expanded to hold nearly 50,000 seated fans) on the banks of the River Wear. Also in 1997, Derby County, Stoke City and Bolton Wanderers all moved into new all-seater stadiums.

Wembley Stadium had been converted to an all-seater format by 1989, but its capacity was reduced to 78,000 from its previous capacity of 100,000. By the mid 1990s, plans were afoot for refurbishment or complete reconstruction of the stadium. The eventual plan was for the old stadium to be demolished and a completely new 90,000-seat stadium to be built in its place. The old stadium finally closed in October 2000 and it was anticipated that the new stadium would be completed in 2003, but a series of delays meant that demolition of the old stadium did not take place for two years after the last game was played, and the new Wembley was not opened until March 2007.

West Ham United moved from the Boleyn Ground into the ~60,000 capacity Olympic Stadium at the end of the 2015-16 season.

The Premier League was founded in 1992 after England's top clubs broke away from the Football League in a successful effort aimed at increasing their income at the expense of clubs in the lower divisions. Links with The Football League were maintained, and each season the bottom three clubs are relegated from the Premier League and replaced by the top three from the Championship. The Premier League is contested between 20 clubs each season. Each club in the Premier League in any given season owns one twentieth of a share in the league itself, meaning that they are all supposedly equal owners with equal rights and responsibilities. Bobby Zamora (English footballer) and Obafemi Martins (Nigerian footballer) are the only two players who have scored penalties with both their feet in the Premier League.

Although the oldest league in the world, the English Football League (EFL) now ranks second in the hierarchy of English football since the split of England's top clubs in 1992 to form the FA Premier League. The EFL has 72 member clubs evenly divided among three divisions, currently named the Championship, League One and League Two. Despite the organisational split, promotion and relegation of clubs still takes place between the Premier League and the EFL.

Below the EFL is what is commonly known as "nonleague", examples include Bath City and FC Halifax Town. This term can be confusing, as it refers to those clubs outside the EFL, although they still play in organised league competitions. In recent years, the top few levels have been consolidated into the National League System, operated by the FA. Most clubs in the top flight of the NLS, the National League division, are fully professional; the remainder are semi-professional.

There is promotion and relegation between League Two and the National League, and for several levels below that, although this becomes more irregular further down the league system. The non-League system is often known as the "pyramid", because the number of leagues at each level begins to increase the further down through the levels, with each league covering a smaller geographic area.

Although the FA abandoned a formal definition of "amateur" in the early 1970s, the vast majority of clubs still effectively play as amateurs, with no financial reward and the leagues are not part of the National League System.

The various County Football Associations, which are based roughly on the historic county boundaries, are the local governing bodies of football in England. They govern all aspects of Sunday league football. Not all County Football Associations are run on county basis. Each armed service has one, for instance such as the Army Football Association which administers football within the British Army.
The Amateur Football Alliance (AFA) is the largest organised amateur competition, being particularly strong in the London area. The AFA is also a County Football Association and as such governs leagues such as the Arthurian League which contains two former FA Cup winners, Old Etonians who won the FA Cup twice, in 1879 and 1882 as well as Old Carthusians who were FA Cup winners in 1881.

Sunday league football in England tends to be lower level amateur football, which is also sometimes referred to as Pub League due to the number of public houses who field teams in Sunday leagues. Each local County Football Association governs all aspects of Sunday league football.

Smaller-sided versions of the game such as Five-a-side football are popular. Futsal is also a growing sport in England. These are often played informally, but there are many competitive small-sided leagues running across the country.

The top division for reserve teams of professional clubs is the Premier Reserve League, which was founded in 1999 and is split into Premier Reserve League North and Premier Reserve League South, both with ten participating teams.

Beneath that operate the Central League for Football League clubs reserve teams in the Midlands and North of England, and the Football Combination for clubs from the South of England and Wales.

The Central League was formed in 1911 and currently has 28 teams, split into three divisions – Central, North and South. The winners of each division and the best runner-up compete in the end-of-season play-offs to decide the league champions. Whilst the Central League is for Football League reserve teams, The West Division contains a Manchester City side which uses a mix of reserve team and youth team squad players and in 2007–08 they were Central League champions. The Central League also organises the Central League Cup, although not all clubs enter the cup.

The Football Combination was formed in 1915 and currently has 30 teams. The Combination is also split into three divisions – East, Central and Wales & East. Whilst the majority of teams are Football League reserve teams, the Combination also currently has the reserve teams of three Conference clubs – Forest Green Rovers, Lewes,and Salisbury City. The Football Combination also organises the Combination Challenge Cup, although not all clubs enter the cup.

There is no promotion and relegation between the reserve team leagues. When a first team is relegated from the Premier League, their reserve team withdraws from the Premier Reserve League to either of the other two leagues and is replaced by the reserve team of the club promoted from the Championship.

Below the professional club reserve leagues, many clubs also operate reserve teams, which play in separate Reserve leagues, such as the Lancashire League. Some lower leagues, such as the North West Counties Football League organise their own reserve leagues. And, at some lower levels of the pyramid, reserve teams play against first teams.

Many club sides have youth teams. The top level of youth football is the Premier Academy League, founded in 1997, which is for all Premier League and Football League clubs that have Academy sides. The league, which currently has 40 clubs, is divided into four groups each with ten teams. The winners of each group contest the end-of-season play-offs to decide the league champions.

The second tier youth league is the Football League Youth Alliance, also founded in 1997, in which those Football League clubs that have Centres of Excellence status field their youth teams. The league, which currently has 58 clubs, is divided into four regional conference leagues. The Youth Alliance also operate the annual Youth Alliance Cup.

The FA Youth Cup is a nationwide cup competition for Under-18 teams organised by the FA. Over 400 clubs enter the FA Youth Cup each season.

There are several cup competitions for clubs at different levels of the football pyramid. The two major cup competitions are the FA Cup and the EFL Cup, with the winners of those competitions qualifying for the UEFA Europa League.

There have also been a number of other cup competitions which are no longer run:

From the 2015–16 season, the various permutations allow for a maximum of five English clubs to qualify for the UEFA Champions League and five for the UEFA Europa League. From the 2018-19 season, the top four clubs in Europe's four highest ranked leagues will qualify directly to the group stages. These leagues are currently England, Germany, Italy, and Spain. The minimum quota is for four English clubs to qualify for the UEFA Champions League and three for the UEFA Europa League.

The England national football team represents England in international football. It is one of the two oldest national football teams in the world, the other one being Scotland. England is one of only eight national teams to have won the World Cup and did this in 1966. They are one of the more prominent teams on the global stage, rarely dropping outside of the top ten rankings of both FIFA and Elo. They were the most successful of the Home Nations in the British Home Championship with 54 wins (including 20 shared wins) before the competition was suspended in 1984.

There are also a number of other national teams from the Under-16 team to the Under-21 team, the latter of which is considered to be a feeder team for the national team. In addition there is an England B team which occasionally plays games as support for the national team. The England C team (formerly the England National Game XI and the England Semi-Professional team) represents England at non-league level. They compete annually in the Four Nations Tournament as well as in friendly matches throughout the year.

The first recorded women's football match in England was more than 100 years ago. Women's football was very popular for many years, but it was stopped by a ban made by the Football Association from 1921 to 1962. It is only in recent years that women's football has begun to recover and receive some serious attention with televised matches (such as the FA Women's Cup final and matches of the national team), international games being held at larger stadiums and, to a lesser extent, the comedy film "Bend It Like Beckham".

Arsenal LFC, who turned fully professional not long after Fulham, have dominated the game in England in the 2000s with Everton LFC also successful. Arsenal have won the FA Women's Cup nine times, and also won the FA Women's Premier League National Division ten times and the FA Women's Premier League Cup nine times before the launch of the WSL. They also won the UEFA Women's Cup in the 2006–07 season. In the 2011 season, the first for both the WSL and its cup competition, the FA WSL Continental Cup, Arsenal claimed the league-cup double. Before the launch of the WSL, Everton won the league title once and were runners-up twice. They have also won the FA Women's Cup once and the FA Women's Premier League Cup once.

Burton Brewers 57–0 loss against Willenhall Town on 4 March 2001 in the West Midland Regional Women's Football League, Division One North may be a British record for the biggest defeat in a football match.

A 2006 poll found that association football was the most popular sport in the UK. In England 320 football clubs are affiliated to The Football Association (FA) and more than 42,000 clubs to regional or district associations. The FA, founded in 1863, and the Football League, founded in 1888, were both the first of their kind in the world. In Scotland there are 78 full and associate clubs and nearly 6,000 registered clubs under the jurisdiction of the Scottish Football Association. Two Welsh clubs play in England's Football League, one in the Premier league, and others at non-league level, whilst the Welsh Football League contains 20 semi-professional clubs. In Northern Ireland, 12 semi-professional clubs play in the IFA Premiership, the second oldest league in the world.

British people

The British people, or the Britons, are the citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the British Overseas Territories, and the Crown dependencies. British nationality law governs modern British citizenship and nationality, which can be acquired, for instance, by descent from British nationals. When used in a historical context, "British" or "Britons" can refer to the Celtic Britons, the indigenous inhabitants of Great Britain and Brittany, whose surviving members are the modern Welsh people, Cornish people, and Bretons. It may also refer to citizens of the former British Empire.

Though early assertions of being British date from the Late Middle Ages, the creation of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707 triggered a sense of British national identity. The notion of Britishness was forged during the Napoleonic Wars between Britain and the First French Empire, and developed further during the Victorian era. The complex history of the formation of the United Kingdom created a "particular sense of nationhood and belonging" in Great Britain and Ireland; Britishness became "superimposed on much older identities", of English, Scots, Welsh and Irish cultures, whose distinctiveness still resists notions of a homogenised British identity. Because of longstanding ethno-sectarian divisions, British identity in Northern Ireland is controversial, but it is held with strong conviction by Unionists.

Modern Britons are descended mainly from the varied ethnic groups that settled in the British Isles in and before the 11th century: Prehistoric, Brittonic, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Normans. The progressive political unification of the British Isles facilitated migration, cultural and linguistic exchange, and intermarriage between the peoples of England, Scotland and Wales during the late Middle Ages, early modern period and beyond. Since 1922 and earlier, there has been immigration to the United Kingdom by people from what is now the Republic of Ireland, the Commonwealth, mainland Europe and elsewhere; they and their descendants are mostly British citizens, with some assuming a British, dual or hyphenated identity.

The British are a diverse, multinational, multicultural and multilingual society, with "strong regional accents, expressions and identities". The social structure of the United Kingdom has changed radically since the 19th century, with a decline in religious observance, enlargement of the middle class, and increased ethnic diversity, particularly since the 1950s. The population of the UK stands at around 66 million, with a British diaspora of around 140 million concentrated in Australia, Canada and New Zealand, with smaller concentrations in the United States, Republic of Ireland, Chile, South Africa and parts of the Caribbean.

The earliest known reference to the inhabitants of Great Britain may have come from 4th century BC records of the voyage of Pytheas, a Greek geographer who made a voyage of exploration around the British Isles. Although none of his own writings remain, writers during the time of the Roman Empire made much reference to them. Pytheas called the islands collectively ("hai Brettaniai"), which has been translated as the "Brittanic Isles", and the peoples of what are today England, Wales, Scotland and the Isle of Man of "Prettanike" were called the ("Prettanoi"), "Priteni", "Pritani" or "Pretani".

The group included Ireland, which was referred to as "Ierne" ("Insula sacra" "sacred island" as the Greeks interpreted it) "inhabited by the different race of "Hiberni"" ("gens hibernorum"), and Britain as "insula Albionum", "island of the Albions". The term "Pritani" may have reached Pytheas from the Gauls, who possibly used it as their term for the inhabitants of the islands.

Greek and Roman writers, in the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD, name the inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland as the "Priteni", the origin of the Latin word "Britanni". It has been suggested that this name derives from a Gaulish description translated as "people of the forms", referring to the custom of tattooing or painting their bodies with blue woad made from "Isatis tinctoria". Parthenius, a 1st-century Ancient Greek grammarian, and the "Etymologicum Genuinum", a 9th-century lexical encyclopaedia, mention a mythical character Bretannus (the Latinised form of the, "Brettanós") as the father of Celtine, mother of Celtus, the eponymous ancestor of the Celts.

By 50 BC Greek geographers were using equivalents of "Prettanikē" as a collective name for the British Isles. However, with the Roman conquest of Britain the Latin term "Britannia" was used for the island of Great Britain, and later Roman-occupied Britain south of Caledonia, although the people of Caledonia and the north were also the self same Britons during the Roman period, the Gaels arriving four centuries later. Following the end of Roman rule in Britain, the island of Great Britain was left open to invasion by pagan, seafaring warriors such as Germanic-speaking Anglo-Saxons and Jutes from Continental Europe, who gained control in areas around the south east, and to Middle Irish-speaking people migrating from what is today Northern Ireland to the north of Great Britain (modern Scotland), founding Gaelic kingdoms such as Dál Riata and Alba, which would eventually subsume the native Brittonic and Pictish kingdoms and become Scotland.

In this sub-Roman Britain, as Anglo-Saxon culture spread across southern and eastern Britain and Gaelic through much of the north, the demonym "Briton" became restricted to the Brittonic-speaking inhabitants of what would later be called Wales, Cornwall, North West England (Cumbria), and parts of Scotland such as Strathearn, Morayshire, Aberdeenshire and Strathclyde. In addition the term was also applied to Brittany in what is today France and Britonia in north west Spain, both regions having been colonised by Britons in the 5th century fleeing the Anglo-Saxon invasions. However, the term Britannia persisted as the Latin name for the island. The "Historia Brittonum" claimed legendary origins as a prestigious genealogy for Brittonic kings, followed by the "Historia Regum Britanniae" which popularised this pseudo-history to support the claims of the Kings of England.

During the Middle Ages, and particularly in the Tudor period, the term "British" was used to refer to the Welsh people and Cornish people. At that time, it was "the long held belief that these were the remaining descendants of the Britons and that they spoke 'the British tongue. This notion was supported by texts such as the "Historia Regum Britanniae", a pseudohistorical account of ancient British history, written in the mid-12th century by Geoffrey of Monmouth. The "Historia Regum Britanniae" chronicled the lives of legendary kings of the Britons in a narrative spanning 2000 years, beginning with the Trojans founding the ancient British nation and continuing until the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain in the 7th century forced the Britons to the west, i.e. Wales and Cornwall, and north, i.e. Cumbria, Strathclyde and northern Scotland. This legendary Celtic history of Great Britain is known as the Matter of Britain. The Matter of Britain, a national myth, was retold or reinterpreted in works by Gerald of Wales, a Cambro-Norman chronicler who in the 12th and 13th centuries used the term British to refer to the people later known as the Welsh.

The indigenous people of the British Isles have a combination of Celtic, Norse, Anglo-Saxon and Norman ancestry.

Between the 8th and 11th centuries, "three major cultural divisions" had emerged in Great Britain: the English, the Scots and the Welsh, the earlier Brittonic Celtic polities in what are today England and Scotland having finally been absorbed into Anglo-Saxon England and Gaelic Scotland by the early 11th century. The English had been unified under a single nation state in 937 by King Athelstan of Wessex after the Battle of Brunanburh. Before then, the English (known then in Old English as the "Anglecynn") were under the governance of independent Anglo-Saxon petty kingdoms which gradually coalesced into a Heptarchy of seven powerful states, the most powerful of which were Mercia and Wessex. Scottish historian and archaeologist Neil Oliver said that the Battle of Brunanburh would "define the shape of Britain into the modern era", it was a "showdown for two very different ethnic identities – a Norse Celtic alliance versus Anglo Saxon. It aimed to settle once and for all whether Britain would be controlled by a single imperial power or remain several separate independent kingdoms, a split in perceptions which is still very much with us today". However, historian Simon Schama suggested that it was Edward I of England who was solely "responsible for provoking the peoples of Britain into an awareness of their nationhood" in the 13th century. Scottish national identity, "a complex amalgam" of Gaelic, Brittonic, Pictish, Norsemen and Anglo-Norman origins, was not finally forged until the Wars of Scottish Independence against the Kingdom of England in the late 13th and early 14th centuries.

Though Wales was conquered by England, and its legal system replaced by that of the Kingdom of England under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542, the Welsh endured as a nation distinct from the English, and to some degree the Cornish people, although conquered into England by the 11th century, also retained a distinct Brittonic identity and language. Later, with both an English Reformation and a Scottish Reformation, Edward VI of England, under the counsel of Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, advocated a union with the Kingdom of Scotland, joining England, Wales, and Scotland in a united Protestant Great Britain. The Duke of Somerset supported the unification of the English, Welsh and Scots under the "indifferent old name of Britons" on the basis that their monarchies "both derived from a Pre-Roman British monarchy".

Following the death of Elizabeth I of England in 1603, the throne of England was inherited by James VI, King of Scots, so that the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland were united in a personal union under James VI of Scotland and I of England, an event referred to as the Union of the Crowns. King James advocated full political union between England and Scotland, and on 20 October 1604 proclaimed his assumption of the style "King of Great Britain", though this title was rejected by both the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland, and so had no basis in either English law or Scots law.

Despite centuries of military and religious conflict, the Kingdoms of England and Scotland had been "drawing increasingly together" since the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century and the Union of the Crowns in 1603. A broadly shared language, island, monarch, religion and Bible (the Authorized King James Version) further contributed to a growing cultural alliance between the two sovereign realms and their peoples. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 resulted in a pair of Acts of the English and Scottish legislatures—the Bill of Rights 1689 and Claim of Right Act 1689 respectively—which ensured that the shared constitutional monarchy of England and Scotland was held only by Protestants. Despite this, although popular with the monarchy and much of the aristocracy, attempts to unite the two states by Acts of Parliament in 1606, 1667, and 1689 were unsuccessful; increased political management of Scottish affairs from England had led to "criticism", and strained Anglo-Scottish relations.

While English maritime explorations during the Age of Discovery gave new-found imperial power and wealth to the English and Welsh at the end of the 17th century, Scotland suffered from a long-standing weak economy. In response, the Scottish kingdom, in opposition to William II of Scotland (III of England), commenced the Darien Scheme, an attempt to establish a Scottish imperial outlet—the colony of New Caledonia—on the isthmus of Panama. However, through a combination of disease, Spanish hostility, Scottish mismanagement and opposition to the scheme by the East India Company and the English government (who did not want to provoke the Spanish into war) this imperial venture ended in "catastrophic failure" with an estimated "25% of Scotland's total liquid capital" lost.

The events of the Darien Scheme, and the passing by the English Parliament of the Act of Settlement 1701 asserting the right to choose the order of succession for English, Scottish and Irish thrones, escalated political hostilities between England and Scotland, and neutralised calls for a united British people. The Parliament of Scotland responded by passing the Act of Security 1704, allowing it to appoint a different monarch to succeed to the Scottish crown from that of England, if it so wished. The English political perspective was that the appointment of a Jacobite monarchy in Scotland opened up the possibility of a Franco-Scottish military conquest of England during the Second Hundred Years' War and War of the Spanish Succession. The Parliament of England passed the Alien Act 1705, which provided that Scottish nationals in England were to be treated as aliens and estates held by Scots would be treated as alien property, whilst also restricting the import of Scottish products into England and its colonies (about half of Scotland's trade). However, the Act contained a provision that it would be suspended if the Parliament of Scotland entered into negotiations regarding the creation of a unified Parliament of Great Britain, which in turn would refund Scottish financial losses on the Darien Scheme.

Despite opposition from within both Scotland and England, a Treaty of Union was agreed in 1706 and was then ratified by the parliaments of both countries with the passing of the Acts of Union 1707. With effect from 1 May 1707, this created a new sovereign state called the "Kingdom of Great Britain". This kingdom "began as a hostile merger", but led to a "full partnership in the most powerful going concern in the world"; historian Simon Schama stated that "it was one of the most astonishing transformations in European history".

After 1707, a British national identity began to develop, though it was initially resisted, particularly by the English. The peoples of Great Britain had by the 1750s begun to assume a "layered identity": to think of themselves as simultaneously British and also Scottish, English, or Welsh.

The terms North Briton and South Briton were devised for the Scots and the English respectively, with the former gaining some preference in Scotland, particularly by the economists and philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment. Indeed, it was the "Scots [who] played key roles in shaping the contours of British identity"; "their scepticism about the Union allowed the Scots the space and time in which
to dominate the construction of Britishness in its early crucial years", drawing upon the notion of a shared "spirit of liberty common to both Saxon and Celt ... against the usurpation of the Church of Rome". James Thomson was a poet and playwright born to a Church of Scotland minister in the Scottish Lowlands in 1700 who was interested in forging a common British culture and national identity in this way. In collaboration with Thomas Arne, they wrote "Alfred", an opera about Alfred the Great's victory against the Vikings performed to Frederick, Prince of Wales in 1740 to commemorate the accession of George I and the birthday of Princess Augusta. "Rule, Britannia!" was the climactic piece of the opera and quickly became a "jingoistic" British patriotic song celebrating "Britain's supremacy offshore". An island country with a series of victories for the Royal Navy associated empire and naval warfare "inextricably with ideals of Britishness and Britain's place in the world".

Britannia, the new national personification of Great Britain, was established in the 1750s as a representation of "nation and empire rather than any single national hero". On Britannia and British identity, historian Peter Borsay wrote:

From the Union of 1707 through to the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, Great Britain was "involved in successive, very dangerous wars with Catholic France", but which "all brought enough military and naval victories ... to flatter British pride". As the Napoleonic Wars with the First French Empire advanced, "the English and Scottish learned to define themselves as similar primarily by virtue of not being French or Catholic". In combination with sea power and empire, the notion of Britishness became more "closely bound up with Protestantism", a cultural commonality through which the English, Scots and Welsh became "fused together, and remain[ed] so, despite their many cultural divergences".

The neo-classical monuments that proliferated at the end of the 18th century and the start of the 19th, such as The Kymin at Monmouth, were attempts to meld the concepts of Britishness with the Greco-Roman empires of classical antiquity. The new and expanding British Empire provided "unprecedented opportunities for upward mobility and the accumulations of wealth", and so the "Scottish, Welsh and Irish populations were prepared to suppress nationalist issues on pragmatic grounds". The British Empire was "crucial to the idea of a British identity and to the self-image of Britishness". Indeed, the Scottish welcomed Britishness during the 19th century "for it offered a context within which they could hold on to their own identity whilst participating in, and benefiting from, the expansion of the [British] Empire". Similarly, the "new emphasis of Britishness was broadly welcomed by the Welsh who considered themselves to be the lineal descendants of the ancient Britons – a word that was still used to refer exclusively to the Welsh". For the English, however, by the Victorian era their enthusiastic adoption of Britishness had meant that, for them, Britishness "meant the same as 'Englishness'", so much so that "Englishness and Britishness" and "'England' and 'Britain' were used interchangeably in a variety of contexts". Britishness came to borrow heavily from English political history because England had "always been the dominant component of the British Isles in terms of size, population and power"; Magna Carta, common law and hostility to continental Europe were English factors that influenced British sensibilities.

The political union in 1800 of the predominantly Catholic Kingdom of Ireland with Great Britain, coupled with the outbreak of peace with France in the early 19th century, challenged the previous century's concept of militant Protestant Britishness. The new, expanded United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland meant that the state had to re-evaluate its position on the civil rights of Catholics, and extend its definition of Britishness to the Irish people. Like the terms that had been invented at the time of the Acts of Union 1707, "West Briton" was introduced for the Irish after 1800. In 1832 Daniel O'Connell, an Irish politician who campaigned for Catholic Emancipation, stated in Britain's House of Commons:

Ireland, from 1801 to 1923, was marked by a succession of economic and political mismanagement and neglect, which marginalised the Irish, and advanced Irish nationalism. In the forty years that followed the Union, successive British governments grappled with the problems of governing a country which had as Benjamin Disraeli, a staunch anti-Irish and anti-Catholic member of the Conservative party with a virulent racial and religious prejudice towards Ireland put it in 1844, "a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, and an alien Church, and in addition the weakest executive in the world". Although the vast majority of Unionists in Ireland proclaimed themselves "simultaneously Irish and British", even for them there was a strain upon the adoption of Britishness after the Great Famine.

War continued to be a unifying factor for the people of Great Britain: British jingoism re-emerged during the Boer Wars in southern Africa. The experience of military, political and economic power from the rise of the British Empire led to a very specific drive in artistic technique, taste and sensibility for Britishness. In 1887, Frederic Harrison wrote:

The Catholic Relief Act 1829 reflected a "marked change in attitudes" in Great Britain towards Catholics and Catholicism. A "significant" example of this was the collaboration between Augustus Welby Pugin, an "ardent Roman Catholic" and son of a Frenchman, and Sir Charles Barry, "a confirmed Protestant", in redesigning the Palace of Westminster—"the building that most enshrines ... Britain's national and imperial pre-tensions". Protestantism gave way to imperialism as the leading element of British national identity during the Victorian and Edwardian eras, and as such, a series of royal, imperial and national celebrations were introduced to the British people to assert imperial British culture and give themselves a sense of uniqueness, superiority and national consciousness. Empire Day and jubilees of Queen Victoria were introduced to the British middle class, but quickly "merged into a national 'tradition'".

The First World War "reinforced the sense of Britishness" and patriotism in the early 20th century. Through war service (including conscription in Great Britain), "the English, Welsh, Scots and Irish fought as British". The aftermath of the war institutionalised British national commemoration through Remembrance Sunday and the Poppy Appeal. The Second World War had a similar unifying effect upon the British people, however, its outcome was to recondition Britishness on a basis of democratic values and its marked contrast to Europeanism. Notions that the British "constituted an Island race, and that it stood for democracy were reinforced during the war and they were circulated in the country through Winston Churchill's speeches, history books and newspapers".

At its international zenith, "Britishness joined peoples around the world in shared traditions and common loyalties that were strenuously maintained". But following the two world wars, the British Empire experienced rapid decolonisation. The secession of the Irish Free State from the United Kingdom meant that Britishness had lost "its Irish dimension" in 1922, and the shrinking empire supplanted by independence movements dwindled the appeal of British identity in the Commonwealth of Nations during the mid-20th century.

Since the British Nationality Act 1948 and the subsequent mass immigration to the United Kingdom from the Commonwealth and elsewhere in the world, "the expression and experience of cultural life in Britain has become fragmented and reshaped by the influences of gender, ethnicity, class and region". Furthermore, the United Kingdom's membership of the European Economic Community in 1973 eroded the concept of Britishness as distinct from continental Europe. As such, since the 1970s "there has been a sense of crisis about what it has meant to be British", exacerbated by growing demands for greater political autonomy for Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.

The late 20th century saw major changes to the politics of the United Kingdom with the establishment of devolved national administrations for Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales following pre-legislative referendums. Calls for greater autonomy for the four countries of the United Kingdom had existed since their original union with each other, but gathered pace in the 1960s and 1970s. Devolution has led to "increasingly assertive Scottish, Welsh and Irish national identities", resulting in more diverse cultural expressions of Britishness, or else its outright rejection: Gwynfor Evans, a Welsh nationalist politician active in the late 20th century, rebuffed Britishness as "a political synonym for Englishness which extends English culture over the Scots, Welsh and the Irish".

In 2004 Sir Bernard Crick, political theorist and democratic socialist tasked with developing the life in the United Kingdom test said:

Gordon Brown initiated a debate on British identity in 2006. Brown's speech to the Fabian Society's Britishness Conference proposed that British values demand a new constitutional settlement and symbols to represent a modern patriotism, including a new youth community service scheme and a British Day to celebrate. One of the central issues identified at the Fabian Society conference was how the English identity fits within the framework of a devolved United Kingdom. An expression of Her Majesty's Government's initiative to promote Britishness was the inaugural Veterans' Day which was first held on 27 June 2006. As well as celebrating the achievements of armed forces veterans, Brown's speech at the first event for the celebration said:

The earliest migrations of Britons date from the 5th and 6th centuries AD, when Brittonic Celts fleeing the Anglo-Saxon invasions migrated what is today northern France and north western Spain and forged the colonies of Brittany and Britonia. Brittany remained independent of France until the early 16th century and still retains a distinct Brittonic culture and language, whilst Britonia in modern Galicia was absorbed into Spanish states by the end of the 9th century AD.

Britons - people with British citizenship or of British descent - have a significant presence in a number of countries other than the United Kingdom, and in particular in those with historic connections to the British Empire. After the Age of Discovery the British were one of the earliest and largest communities to emigrate out of Europe, and the British Empire's expansion during the first half of the 19th century triggered an "extraordinary dispersion of the British people", resulting in particular concentrations "in Australasia and North America".

The British Empire was "built on waves of migration overseas by British people", who left the United Kingdom and "reached across the globe and permanently affected population structures in three continents". As a result of the British colonisation of the Americas, what became the United States was "easily the greatest single destination of emigrant British", but in Australia the British experienced a birth rate higher than "anything seen before" resulting in the displacement of indigenous Australians.

In colonies such as Southern Rhodesia, British East Africa and Cape Colony, permanently resident British communities were established and whilst never more than a numerical minority these Britons "exercised a dominant influence" upon the culture and politics of those lands. In Australia, Canada and New Zealand "people of British origin came to constitute the majority of the population" contributing to these states becoming integral to the Anglosphere.

The United Kingdom Census 1861 estimated the size of the overseas British to be around 2.5 million, but concluded that most of these were "not conventional settlers" but rather "travellers, merchants, professionals, and military personnel". By 1890, there were over 1.5 million further UK-born people living in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. A 2006 publication from the Institute for Public Policy Research estimated 5.6 million Britons lived outside of the United Kingdom.

Outside of the United Kingdom and its Overseas Territories, the largest proportions of people of self-identified ethnic British descent in the world are found in New Zealand (59%), Australia (46%) and Canada (31%), followed by a considerably smaller minority in the United States (12%) and parts of the Caribbean. Hong Kong has the highest proportion of British citizens outside of the United Kingdom and its Overseas Territories, with 47% of Hong Kong residents holding a British National (Overseas) citizenship or a British citizenship.

From the beginning of Australia's colonial period until after the Second World War, people from the United Kingdom made up a large majority of people coming to Australia, meaning that many people born in Australia can trace their origins to Britain. The colony of New South Wales, founded on 26 January 1788, was part of the eastern half of Australia claimed by the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1770, and initially settled by Britons through penal transportation. Together with another five largely self-governing Crown Colonies, the federation of Australia was achieved on 1 January 1901.

Its history of British dominance meant that Australia was "grounded in British culture and political traditions that had been transported to the Australian colonies in the nineteenth century and become part of colonial culture and politics". Australia maintains the Westminster system of Parliamentary Government and Elizabeth II as Queen of Australia. Until 1987, the national status of Australian citizens was formally described as "British Subject: Citizen of Australia". Britons continue to make up a substantial proportion of immigrants.

All 6 states of Australia retain the flag of the United Kingdom in the canton of their respective flags.

The approximately 250,000 people of the British overseas territories are British by citizenship, via origins or naturalisation. Along with aspects of common British identity, each of them has their own distinct identity shaped in the respective particular circumstances of political, economic, ethnic, social and cultural history. For instance, in the case of the Falkland Islanders, Lewis Clifton the Speaker of the Legislative Council of the Falkland Islands, explains:
In contrast, for the majority of the Gibraltarians, who live in Gibraltar, there is an "insistence on their Britishness" which "carries excessive loyalty" to Britain. The sovereignty of Gibraltar has been a point of contention in Spain–United Kingdom relations, but an overwhelming number of Gibraltarians embrace Britishness with strong conviction, in direct opposition to Spanish territorial claims.

Canada traces its statehood to the French, English and Scottish expeditions of North America from the late-15th century. France ceded nearly all of New France in 1763 after the Seven Years' War, and so after the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776, Quebec and Nova Scotia formed "the nucleus of the colonies that constituted Britain's remaining stake on the North American continent". British North America attracted the United Empire Loyalists, Britons who migrated out of what they considered the "rebellious" United States, increasing the size of British communities in what was to become Canada.
In 1867 there was a union of three colonies with British North America which together formed the Canadian Confederation, a federal dominion. This began an accretion of additional provinces and territories and a process of increasing autonomy from the United Kingdom, highlighted by the Statute of Westminster 1931 and culminating in the Canada Act 1982, which severed the vestiges of legal dependence on the parliament of the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, it is recognised that there is a "continuing importance of Canada's long and close relationship with Britain"; large parts of Canada's modern population claim "British origins" and the cultural impact of the British upon Canada's institutions is profound.

It was not until 1977 that the phrase "A Canadian citizen is a British subject" ceased to be used in Canadian passports. The politics of Canada are strongly influenced by British political culture. Although significant modifications have been made, Canada is governed by a democratic parliamentary framework comparable to the Westminster system, and retains Elizabeth II as The Queen of Canada and Head of State. English is the mostly commonly spoken language used in Canada and it is an official language of Canada.

British iconography remains present in the design of many Canadian flags, with 10 out of 13 Canadian provincial and territorial flags adopting some form of British symbolism in their design. The flag of the United Kingdom is also an official ceremonial flag in Canada known as the Royal Union Flag which is flown outside of federal buildings three days of the year.

A long-term result of James Cook's voyage of 1768–1771, a significant number of New Zealanders are of British descent, for whom a sense of Britishness has contributed to their identity. As late as the 1950s, it was common for British New Zealanders to refer to themselves as British, such as when Prime Minister Keith Holyoake described Sir Edmund Hillary's successful ascent of Mount Everest as putting "the British race and New Zealand on top of the world". New Zealand passports described nationals as "British Subject: Citizen of New Zealand" until 1974, when this was changed to "New Zealand citizen".

In an interview with the "New Zealand Listener" in 2006, Don Brash, the then Leader of the Opposition, said:

The politics of New Zealand are strongly influenced by British political culture. Although significant modifications have been made, New Zealand is governed by a democratic parliamentary framework comparable to the Westminster system, and retains Elizabeth II as the head of the monarchy of New Zealand. English is the dominant official language used in New Zealand.

British nationality law as it pertains to Hong Kong has been unusual ever since Hong Kong became a British colony in 1842. From its beginning as a sparsely populated trading port to its modern role as a cosmopolitan international financial centre of over seven million people, the territory has attracted refugees, immigrants and expatriates alike searching for a new life.
Citizenship matters were complicated by the fact that British nationality law treated those born in Hong Kong as British subjects (although they did not enjoy full rights and citizenship), while the People's Republic of China (PRC) did not recognise Hong Kong Chinese as such. The main reason for this was that recognising these people as British was seen as a tacit acceptance of a series of historical treaties that the PRC labelled as "unequal", including the ones which ceded Hong Kong Island, the Kowloon Peninsula and the New Territories to Britain. The British government, however, recognising the unique political situation of Hong Kong, granted 3.4 million Hong Kongers a new type of nationality known as British National (Overseas), which is established in accordance with the Hong Kong Act 1985. Among those 3.4 million people, there are many British Nationals (Overseas) who are eligible for full British citizenship. Both British Nationals (Overseas) and British citizens are British nationals and Commonwealth citizens according to the British Nationality Law, which enables them to various rights in the United Kingdom and the European Union.

An English presence in North America began with the Roanoke Colony and Colony of Virginia in the late-16th century, but the first successful English settlement was established in 1607, on the James River at Jamestown. By the 1610s an estimated 1,300 English people had travelled to North America, the "first of many millions from the British Isles". In 1620 the Pilgrims established the English imperial venture of Plymouth Colony, beginning "a remarkable acceleration of permanent emigration from England" with over 60% of trans-Atlantic English migrants settling in the New England Colonies. During the 17th century an estimated 350,000 English and Welsh migrants arrived in North America, which in the century after the Acts of Union 1707 was surpassed in rate and number by Scottish and Irish migrants.

The British policy of salutary neglect for its North American colonies intended to minimise trade restrictions as a way of ensuring they stayed loyal to British interests. This permitted the development of the American Dream, a cultural spirit distinct from that of its European founders. The Thirteen Colonies of British America began an armed rebellion against British rule in 1775 when they rejected the right of the Parliament of Great Britain to govern them without representation; they proclaimed their independence in 1776, and constituted the first thirteen states of the United States of America, which became a sovereign state in 1781 with the ratification of the Articles of Confederation. The 1783 Treaty of Paris represented Great Britain's formal acknowledgement of the United States' sovereignty at the end of the American Revolutionary War.

Nevertheless, longstanding cultural and historical ties have, in more modern times, resulted in the Special Relationship, the historically close political, diplomatic, and military co-operation between the United Kingdom and United States. Linda Colley, a professor of history at Princeton University and specialist in Britishness, suggested that because of their colonial influence on the United States, the British find Americans a "mysterious and paradoxical people, physically distant but culturally close, engagingly similar yet irritatingly different".

The largest concentrations of self-reported British ethnic ancestry in the United States were found to be in Utah (35%), Maine (30%), New Hampshire (25%) and Vermont (25%) at the 2015 American Community Survey. Overall, 12% of Americans reported their ethnic ancestry as some form of "British", behind German and African ancestries and on par with Mexican and Irish ancestries.

Approximately 4% of Chile's population is of British or Irish descent. Over 50,000 British immigrants settled in Chile from 1840 to 1914. A significant number of them settled in Magallanes Province, especially in the city of Punta Arenas when it flourished as a major global seaport for ships crossing between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through the Strait of Magellan. Around 32,000 English settled in Valparaíso, influencing the port city to the extent of making it virtually a British colony during the last decades of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. However, the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 and the outbreak of the First World War drove many of them away from the city or back to Europe.

In Valparaíso, they created their largest and most important colony, bringing with them neighbourhoods of British character, schools, social clubs, sports clubs, business organisations and periodicals. Even today their influence is apparent in specific areas, such as the banks and the navy, as well as in certain social activities, such as football, horse racing, and the custom of drinking tea.

During the movement for independence (1818), it was mainly the British who formed the Chilean Navy, under the command of Lord Cochrane.

British investment helped Chile become prosperous and British seamen helped the Chilean navy become a strong force in the South Pacific. Chile won two wars, the first against the Peru-Bolivian Confederation and the second, the War of the Pacific, in 1878–79, against an alliance between Peru and Bolivia. The liberal-socialist "Revolution of 1891" introduced political reforms modelled on British parliamentary practice and lawmaking.

British immigrants were also important in the northern zone of the country during the saltpetre boom, in the ports of Iquique and Pisagua. The "King of Saltpetre", John Thomas North, was the principal tycoon of nitrate mining. The British legacy is reflected in the streets of the historic district of the city of Iquique, with the foundation of various institutions, such as the Club Hípico (Racing Club). Nevertheless, the British active presence came to an end with the saltpetre crisis during the 1930s.

Some Scots settled in the country's more temperate regions, where the climate and the forested landscape with glaciers and islands may have reminded them of their homeland (the Highlands and Northern Scotland) while English and Welsh made up the rest. The Irish immigrants, who were frequently confused with the British, arrived as merchants, tradesmen and sailors, settling along with the British in the main trading cities and ports.

An important contingent of British (principally Welsh) immigrants arrived between 1914 and 1950, settling in the present-day region of Magallanes. British families were established in other areas of the country, such as Santiago, Coquimbo, the Araucanía, and Chiloé.

The cultural legacy of the British in Chile is notable and has spread beyond the British Chilean community into society at large. Customs taken from the British include afternoon tea (called onces by Chileans), football, rugby union and horse racing. Another legacy is the widespread use of British personal names by Chileans.

Chile has the largest population of descendants of British settlers in Latin America. Over 700,000 Chileans may have British (English, Scottish and Welsh) origin, amounting to 4.5% of Chile's population.

The British arrived in the area which would become the modern-day South Africa during the early 18th century, yet substantial settlement only started end of the 18th century, in the Cape of Good Hope; the British first explored the area for conquests for or related to the Slave Trade. In the late 19th century, the discovery of gold and diamonds further encouraged colonisation of South Africa by the British, and the population of the British-South Africans rose substantially, although there was fierce rivalry between the British and Afrikaners (descendants of Dutch colonists) in the period known as the Boer Wars. When apartheid first started most British-South Africans were mostly keen on keeping and even strengthening its ties with the United Kingdom. The latest census in South Africa showed that there are almost 2 million British-South Africans; they make up about 40% of the total White South African demographic, and the greatest white British ancestry populations in South Africa are in the KwaZulu-Natal province and in the cities of Cape Town, Durban and Port Elizabeth.

Plantations of Ireland introduced large numbers of people from Great Britain to Ireland throughout the Middle Ages and early modern period. The resulting Protestant Ascendancy, the aristocratic class of the Lordship of Ireland, broadly identified themselves as Anglo-Irish. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Protestant British settlers subjugated Catholic, Gaelic inhabitants in the north of Ireland during the Plantation of Ulster and the Williamite War in Ireland; it was "an explicit attempt to control Ireland strategically by introducing ethnic and religious elements loyal to the British interest in Ireland".

The Ulster Scots people are an ethnic group of British origin in Ireland, broadly descended from Lowland Scots who settled in large numbers in the Province of Ulster during the planned process of colonisations of Ireland which took place in the reign of James VI of Scotland and I of England. Together with English and Welsh settlers, these Scots introduced Protestantism (particularly the Presbyterianism of the Church of Scotland) and the Ulster Scots and English languages to, mainly, northeastern Ireland. With the partition of Ireland and independence for what is now the Republic of Ireland some of these people found themselves no longer living within the United Kingdom.

Northern Ireland itself was, for many years, the site of a violent and bitter ethno-sectarian conflict—The Troubles—between those claiming to represent Irish nationalism, who are predominantly Roman Catholic, and those claiming to represent British unionism, who are predominantly Protestant. Unionists want Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom, while nationalists desire a united Ireland.

Since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, most of the paramilitary groups involved in the Troubles have ceased their armed campaigns, and constitutionally, the people of Northern Ireland have been recognised as "all persons born in Northern Ireland and having, at the time of their birth, at least one parent who is a British citizen, an Irish citizen or is otherwise entitled to reside in Northern Ireland without any restriction on their period of residence". The Good Friday Agreement guarantees the "recognition of the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both, as they may so choose".

Result from the expansion of the British Empire, British cultural influence can be observed in the language and culture of a geographically wide assortment of countries such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Pakistan, the United States, and the British overseas territories. These states are sometimes collectively known as the Anglosphere. As well as the British influence on its empire, the empire also influenced British culture, particularly British cuisine. Innovations and movements within the wider-culture of Europe have also changed the United Kingdom; Humanism, Protestantism, and representative democracy have developed from broader Western culture.

As a result of the history of the formation of the United Kingdom, the cultures of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are diverse and have varying degrees of overlap and distinctiveness.

Historically, British cuisine has meant "unfussy dishes made with quality local ingredients, matched with simple sauces to accentuate flavour, rather than disguise it". It has been "vilified as unimaginative and heavy", and traditionally been limited in its international recognition to the full breakfast and the Christmas dinner. This is despite British cuisine having absorbed the culinary influences of those who have settled in Britain, resulting in hybrid dishes such as the British Asian Chicken tikka masala, hailed by some as "Britain's true national dish".

Celtic agriculture and animal breeding produced a wide variety of foodstuffs for Celts and Britons. The Anglo-Saxons developed meat and savoury herb stewing techniques before the practice became common in Europe. The Norman conquest of England introduced exotic spices into Britain in the Middle Ages. The British Empire facilitated a knowledge of India's food tradition of "strong, penetrating spices and herbs". Food rationing policies, imposed by the British government during wartime periods of the 20th century, are said to have been the stimulus for British cuisine's poor international reputation.

British dishes include fish and chips, the Sunday roast, and bangers and mash. British cuisine has several national and regional varieties, including English, Scottish and Welsh cuisine, each of which has developed its own regional or local dishes, many of which are geographically indicated foods such as Cheddar cheese, Cheshire cheese, the Yorkshire pudding, Arbroath Smokie, Cornish pasty and Welsh cakes.

The British are the second largest per capita tea consumers in the world, consuming an average of per person each year. British tea culture dates back to the 19th century, when India was part of the British Empire and British interests controlled tea production in the subcontinent.

There is no single British language, though English is by far the main language spoken by British citizens, being spoken monolingually by more than 70% of the UK population. English is therefore the "de facto" official language of the United Kingdom. However, under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, the Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Cornish, Irish Gaelic, Ulster Scots, Manx, Scots and Lowland Scots languages are officially recognised as Regional or Minority languages by the UK Government. As indigenous languages which continue to be spoken as a first language by native inhabitants, Welsh and Scottish Gaelic have a different legal status from other minority languages. In some parts of the UK, some of these languages are commonly spoken as a first language; in wider areas, their use in a bilingual context is sometimes supported or promoted by central or local government policy. For naturalisation purposes, a competence standard of English, Scottish Gaelic or Welsh is required to pass the life in the United Kingdom test. However, English is used routinely, and although considered culturally important, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh are much less used.

Throughout the United Kingdom there are distinctive spoken expressions and regional accents of English, which are seen to be symptomatic of a locality's culture and identity. An awareness and knowledge of accents in the United Kingdom can "place, within a few miles, the locality in which a man or woman has grown up".

British literature is "one of the leading literatures in the world". The overwhelming part is written in the English language, but there are also pieces of literature written in Scots, Scottish Gaelic, Ulster Scots, Cornish and Welsh.

Britain has a long history of famous and influential authors. It boasts some of the oldest pieces of literature in the Western world, such as the epic poem Beowulf, one of the oldest surviving written work in the English language.

Famous authors include some of the world's most studied and praised writers. William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe defined England's Elizabethan period. The British Romantic movement was one of the strongest and most recognisable in Europe. The poets William Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge were amongst the pioneers of Romanticism in literature. Other Romantic writers that followed these figure further enhanced the profile of Romanticism in Europe, such as John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron. Later periods like the Victorian Era saw a further flourishing of British writing, including Charles Dickens and William Thackeray.

Women's literature in Britain has had a long and often troubled history, with many female writers producing work under a pen name, such as George Eliot. Other great female novelists that have contributed to world literature are Frances Burney, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters, Emily, Charlotte and Anne.

Non-fiction has also played an important role in the history of British letters, with the first dictionary of the English language being produced and compiled by Samuel Johnson, a graduate of Oxford University and a London resident.

Although cinema, theatre, dance and live music are popular, the favourite pastime of the British is watching television. Public broadcast television in the United Kingdom began in 1936, with the launch of the BBC Television Service (now BBC One). In the United Kingdom and the Crown dependencies, one must have a television licence to legally receive any broadcast television service, from any source. This includes the commercial channels, cable and satellite transmissions, and the Internet. Revenue generated from the television licence is used to provide radio, television and Internet content for the British Broadcasting Corporation, and Welsh language television programmes for S4C. The BBC, the common abbreviation of the British Broadcasting Corporation, is the world's largest broadcaster. Unlike other broadcasters in the UK, it is a public service based, quasi-autonomous, statutory corporation run by the BBC Trust. Free-to-air terrestrial television channels available on a national basis are BBC One, BBC Two, ITV, Channel 4 (S4C in Wales), and Five.

100 Greatest British Television Programmes was a list compiled by the British Film Institute in 2000, chosen by a poll of industry professionals, to determine what were the greatest British television programmes of any genre ever to have been screened. Topping the list was "Fawlty Towers", a British sitcom set in a fictional Torquay hotel starring John Cleese.

"British musical tradition is essentially vocal", dominated by the music of England and Germanic culture, most greatly influenced by hymns and Anglican church music. However, the specific, traditional music of Wales and music of Scotland is distinct, and of the Celtic musical tradition. In the United Kingdom, more people attend live music performances than football matches. British rock was born in the mid-20th century out of the influence of rock and roll and rhythm and blues from the United States. Major early exports were The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who and The Kinks. Together with other bands from the United Kingdom, these constituted the British Invasion, a popularisation of British pop and rock music in the United States. Into the 1970s heavy metal, new wave, and 2 tone. Britpop is a subgenre of alternative rock that emerged from the British independent music scene of the early 1990s and was characterised by bands reviving British guitar pop music of the 1960s and 1970s. Leading exponents of Britpop were Blur, Oasis and Pulp. Also popularised in the United Kingdom during the 1990s were several domestically produced varieties of electronic dance music; acid house, UK hard house, jungle, UK garage which in turn have influenced grime and British hip hop in the 2000s. The BRIT Awards are the British Phonographic Industry's annual awards for both international and British popular music.

Historically, Christianity has been the most influential and important religion in Britain, and it remains the declared faith of the majority of the British people. The influence of Christianity on British culture has been "widespread, extending beyond the spheres of prayer and worship. Churches and cathedrals make a significant contribution to the architectural landscape of the nation's cities and towns" whilst "many schools and hospitals were founded by men and women who were strongly influenced by Christian motives". Throughout the United Kingdom, Easter and Christmas, the "two most important events in the Christian calendar", are recognised as public holidays.

Christianity remains the major religion of the population of the United Kingdom in the 21st century, followed by Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and then Judaism in terms of numbers of adherents. The 2007 Tearfund Survey revealed 53% identified themselves as Christian, which was similar to the 2004 British Social Attitudes Survey, and to the United Kingdom Census 2001 in which 71.6% said that Christianity was their religion, However, the Tearfund Survey showed only one in ten Britons attend church weekly. Secularism was advanced in Britain during the Age of Enlightenment, and modern British organisations such as the British Humanist Association and the National Secular Society offer the opportunity for their members to "debate and explore the moral and philosophical issues in a non-religious setting".

The Treaty of Union that led to the formation of the Kingdom of Great Britain ensured that there would be a Protestant succession as well as a link between church and state that still remains. The Church of England (Anglican) is legally recognised as the established church, and so retains representation in the Parliament of the United Kingdom through the Lords Spiritual, whilst the British monarch is a member of the church as well as its Supreme Governor. The Church of England also retains the right to draft legislative measures (related to religious administration) through the General Synod that can then be passed into law by Parliament. The Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales is the second largest Christian church with around five million members, mainly in England. There are also growing Orthodox, Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, with Pentecostal churches in England now third after the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church in terms of church attendance. Other large Christian groups include Methodists and Baptists.

The Presbyterian Church of Scotland (known informally as The Kirk), is recognised as the national church of Scotland and not subject to state control. The British monarch is an ordinary member and is required to swear an oath to "defend the security" of the church upon his or her accession. The Roman Catholic Church in Scotland is Scotland's second largest Christian church, with followers representing a sixth of the population of Scotland. The Scottish Episcopal Church, which is part of the Anglican Communion, dates from the final establishment of Presbyterianism in Scotland in 1690, when it split from the Church of Scotland over matters of theology and ritual. Further splits in the Church of Scotland, especially in the 19th century, led to the creation of other Presbyterian churches in Scotland, including the Free Church of Scotland. In the 1920s, the Church in Wales became independent from the Church of England and became 'disestablished' but remains in the Anglican Communion. Methodism and other Protestant churches have had a major presence in Wales. The main religious groups in Northern Ireland are organised on an all-Ireland basis. Though collectively Protestants constitute the overall majority, the Roman Catholic Church of Ireland is the largest single church. The Presbyterian Church in Ireland, closely linked to the Church of Scotland in terms of theology and history, is the second largest church followed by the Church of Ireland (Anglican) which was disestablished in the 19th century.

Sport is an important element of British culture, and is one of the most popular leisure activities of Britons. Within the United Kingdom, nearly half of all adults partake in one or more sporting activity each week. Some of the major sports in the United Kingdom "were invented by the British", including football, rugby union, rugby league and cricket, and "exported various other games" including tennis, badminton, boxing, golf, snooker and squash.

In most sports, separate organisations, teams and clubs represent the individual countries of the United Kingdom at international level, though in some sports, like rugby union, an all-Ireland team represents both Northern Ireland and Ireland (Republic of), and the British and Irish Lions represent Ireland and Britain as a whole. The UK is represented by a single team at the Olympic Games and at the 2012 Summer Olympics, the Great Britain team won 65 medals: 29 gold (the most since the 1908 Summer Olympics), 17 silver and 19 bronze, ranking them 3rd. In total, sportsmen and women from the UK "hold over 50 world titles in a variety of sports, such as professional boxing, rowing, snooker, squash and motorcycle sports".

A 2006 poll found that association football was the most popular sport in the UK. In England 320 football clubs are affiliated to The Football Association (FA) and more than 42,000 clubs to regional or district associations. The FA, founded in 1863, and the Football League, founded in 1888, were both the first of their kind in the world. In Scotland there are 78 full and associate clubs and nearly 6,000 registered clubs under the jurisdiction of the Scottish Football Association. Two Welsh clubs play in England's Football League, one in the Premier league, and others at non-league level, whilst the Welsh Football League contains 20 semi-professional clubs. In Northern Ireland, 12 semi-professional clubs play in the IFA Premiership, the second oldest league in the world.

Recreational fishing, particularly angling, is one of the most popular participation activities in the United Kingdom, with an estimated 3—4 million anglers in the country. The most widely practised form of angling in England and Wales is for coarse fish while in Scotland angling is usually for salmon and trout.

For centuries, artists and architects in Britain were overwhelmingly influenced by Western art history. Amongst the first visual artists credited for developing a distinctly British aesthetic and artistic style is William Hogarth. The experience of military, political and economic power from the rise of the British Empire, led to a very specific drive in artistic technique, taste and sensibility in the United Kingdom. Britons used their art "to illustrate their knowledge and command of the natural world", whilst the permanent settlers in British North America, Australasia, and South Africa "embarked upon a search for distinctive artistic expression appropriate to their sense of national identity". The empire has been "at the centre, rather than in the margins, of the history of British art", and imperial British visual arts have been fundamental to the construction, celebration and expression of Britishness.

British attitudes to modern art were "polarised" at the end of the 19th century. Modernist movements were both cherished and vilified by artists and critics; Impressionism was initially regarded by "many conservative critics" as a "subversive foreign influence", but became "fully assimilated" into British art during the early-20th century. Representational art was described by Herbert Read during the interwar period as "necessarily... revolutionary", and was studied and produced to such an extent that by the 1950s, Classicism was effectively void in British visual art. Post-modern, contemporary British art, particularly that of the Young British Artists, has been pre-occupied with postcolonialism, and "characterised by a fundamental concern with material culture ... perceived as a post-imperial cultural anxiety".

Architecture of the United Kingdom is diverse; most influential developments have usually taken place in England, but Ireland, Scotland, and Wales have at various times played leading roles in architectural history. Although there are prehistoric and classical structures in the British Isles, British architecture effectively begins with the first Anglo-Saxon Christian churches, built soon after Augustine of Canterbury arrived in Great Britain in 597. Norman architecture was built on a vast scale from the 11th century onwards in the form of castles and churches to help impose Norman authority upon their dominion. English Gothic architecture, which flourished between 1180 until around 1520, was initially imported from France, but quickly developed its own unique qualities. Secular medieval architecture throughout Britain has left a legacy of large stone castles, with the "finest examples" being found lining both sides of the Anglo-Scottish border, dating from the Wars of Scottish Independence of the 14th century. The invention of gunpowder and canons made castles redundant, and the English Renaissance which followed facilitiated the development of new artistic styles for domestic architecture: Tudor style, English Baroque, The Queen Anne Style and Palladian. Georgian and Neoclassical architecture advanced after the Scottish Enlightenment. Outwith the United Kingdom, the influence of British architecture is particularly strong in South India, the result of British rule in India in the 19th century. The Indian cities of Bangalore, Chennai, and Mumbai each have courts, hotels and train stations designed in British architectural styles of Gothic Revivalism and neoclassicism.

British political culture is tied closely with its institutions and civics, and a "subtle fusion of new and old values". The principle of constitutional monarchy, with its notions of stable parliamentary government and political liberalism, "have come to dominate British culture". These views have been reinforced by Sir Bernard Crick who said:

British political institutions include the Westminster system, the Commonwealth of Nations and Privy Council of the United Kingdom. Although the Privy Council is primarily a British institution, officials from other Commonwealth realms are also appointed to the body. The most notable continuing instance is the Prime Minister of New Zealand, its senior politicians, Chief Justice and Court of Appeal judges are conventionally made Privy Counsellors, as the prime ministers and chief justices of Canada and Australia used to be. Prime Ministers of Commonwealth countries which retain the British monarch as their sovereign continue to be sworn as Privy Counsellors.

Universal suffrage for all males over 21 was granted in 1918 and for adult women in 1928 after the Suffragette movement. Politics in the United Kingdom is multi-party, with three dominant political parties: the Conservative Party, the Labour Party and the Scottish National Party. The social structure of Britain, specifically social class, has "long been pre-eminent among the factors used to explain party allegiance", and still persists as "the dominant basis" of party political allegiance for Britons. The Conservative Party is descended from the historic Tory Party (founded in England in 1678), and is a centre-right conservative political party, which traditionally draws support from the middle classes. The Labour Party (founded by Scotsman Keir Hardie) grew out of the trade union movement and socialist political parties of the 19th century, and continues to describe itself as a "democratic socialist party". Labour states that it stands for the representation of the low-paid working class, who have traditionally been its members and voters. The Scottish National Party is the third largest political party in the UK in terms of both party membership and representation in parliament, having won 56 out of 59 Scottish seats at the 2015 General Election. The Liberal Democrats are a liberal political party, and third largest in England in terms of membership and MPs elected. It is descended from the Liberal Party, a major ruling party of 19th-century Britain through to the First World War, when it was supplanted by the Labour Party. The Liberal Democrats have historically drawn support from wide and "differing social backgrounds". There are over 300 other, smaller political parties in the United Kingdom registered to the Electoral Commission.

According to the British Social Attitudes Survey, there are broadly two interpretations of British identity, with ethnic and civic dimensions:

Of the two perspectives of British identity, the civic definition has become "the dominant idea ... by far", and in this capacity, Britishness is sometimes considered an institutional or overarching state identity. This has been used to explain why first-, second- and third-generation immigrants are more likely to describe themselves as British, rather than English, because it is an "institutional, inclusive" identity, that can be acquired through naturalisation and British nationality law; the vast majority of people in the United Kingdom who are from an ethnic minority feel British.

However, this attitude is more common in England than in Scotland or Wales; "white English people perceived themselves as English first and as British second, and most people from ethnic minority backgrounds perceived themselves as British, but none identified as English, a label they associated exclusively with white people". Contrawise, in Scotland and Wales, White British and ethnic minority people both identified more strongly with Scotland and Wales than with Britain.

Studies and surveys have "reported that the majority of the Scots and Welsh see themselves as both Scottish/Welsh and British though with some differences in emphasis". The Commission for Racial Equality found that with respect to notions of nationality in Britain, "the most basic, objective and uncontroversial conception of the British people is one that includes the English, the Scots and the Welsh". However, "English participants tended to think of themselves as indistinguishably English or British, while both Scottish and Welsh participants identified themselves much more readily as Scottish or Welsh than as British".

Some persons opted "to combine both identities" as "they felt Scottish or Welsh, but held a British passport and were therefore British", whereas others saw themselves as exclusively Scottish or exclusively Welsh and "felt quite divorced from the British, whom they saw as the English". Commentators have described this latter phenomenon as "nationalism", a rejection of British identity because some Scots and Welsh interpret it as "cultural imperialism imposed" upon the United Kingdom by "English ruling elites", or else a response to a historical misappropriation of equating the word "English" with "British", which has "brought about a desire among Scots, Welsh and Irish to learn more about their heritage and distinguish themselves from the broader British identity".

Non-League football describes football leagues played outside the top leagues of a country. Usually it describes leagues which are not fully professional. The term is primarily used for football in England, where it describes football played at a level below that of the Premier League (20 clubs) and the three divisions of the English Football League (EFL; 72 clubs). The term "non-League" was commonly used well before 1992 when the top football clubs in England all belonged to The Football League (from 2016, the EFL); all clubs who were not a part of The Football League were therefore 'non-League' clubs. The term can be confusing as the vast majority of non-league football clubs in England play in a type of league. Currently, a non-League team would be any club playing in the National League and below and therefore would not play in the EFL Cup.

Non-League football

The "League" of "non-League football" refers to the English Football League, rather than leagues in general — "non-League" clubs play most of their football in league competitions. There are many leagues below the level of the EFL, and some, such as the Northern League, are almost as old as the EFL itself. The most senior of these leagues are loosely organised by The Football Association, the sport's governing body in England, into a National League System (NLS). The NLS has seven levels or "steps", and includes over 50 separate leagues, many with more than one division.

Prior to the 1986–87 season, there was no automatic promotion and relegation between The Football League and the leagues of non-League football. The bottom clubs of The EFL were required to apply for re-election to the League at the end of the season, but this was in most cases a mere formality. The system ensured that Football League membership remained relatively static, with non-League clubs having little chance of joining.

However, a major change came in 1986 when automatic promotion and relegation of one club between The Football League and the Football Conference, the top league in non-League football, was introduced, subject to the eligible club meeting the required facility and financial standards. Scarborough became the first non-League club to win automatic promotion to The Football League, and Lincoln City became the first League club to be relegated to the ranks of non-League football. Since the 2002–03 season, two clubs from the Conference, now National League (the champions and the winners of a play-off) have been promoted at the end of each season.

The entire English football league system includes the Premier League, the EFL, the NLS leagues, and any local leagues that have feeder relationships with an NLS league.

Many non-League clubs enter the FA Cup, where they hope to become "giant-killers" by progressing from the qualifying rounds, and first and second rounds proper, to meet and beat opposition from the Premier League or EFL Championship. Since the end of the Second World War, nine non-League clubs have reached the Fifth Round of the FA Cup, and only one (Lincoln City in 2016–17 season) reached the quarter-final stage. The only non-League team to have won the competition since The Football League started is Tottenham Hotspur in the 1901 FA Cup Final, although at that time The Football League had only two divisions, consisting almost entirely of Northern and Midland clubs. The leading non-League clubs in the South played in the Southern Football League, which then ran parallel to The Football League, were of a comparable standard to the League clubs. From its inaugural match in 1908 until 1912, the FA Charity Shield was contested between the champions of The Football League and the Southern Football League.

The Football Association Challenge Trophy was introduced in 1969 to offer semi-professional non-League clubs a realistic chance of winning an FA competition. Amateur clubs could enter the FA Amateur Cup until 1974 when the Football Association abolished the distinction between professionals and amateurs. The Amateur Cup was replaced by the FA Vase in 1974 which is currently contested by clubs at Step 5 of the NLS and below while the Trophy is contested by clubs at Steps 1–4.

In women's football, the "non-League" term is used for those clubs in the divisions below the FA Women's Premier League's two regional second divisions.

In Scotland, "non-league football" refers to leagues outside the top four divisions of the national Scottish Professional Football League. These consist of a number of regional senior leagues which are part of the Scottish football pyramid system, as well as the separate regional Junior leagues.

It is also used throughout Europe, although in Germany non-professional leagues are known as "Regionalliga", as the leagues are all regional depending on the location of the town or city the team represents, unlike 1. Bundesliga, 2. Bundesliga and 3. Liga all being national leagues. Until 1974, it was the second tier of the league system before being disbanded. The Regionalliga was then re-introduced as the third tier of the system in 1994. Upon introduction of the 3. Liga in 2008, it was demoted to the fourth level of the pyramid, in the same way every league below the 5th step of the English pyramid was moved a step down due to the introduction of the Conference North and South, now National League North and South.

In the Republic of Ireland, football outside the top two divisions consists of regional senior leagues based on which province the club comes from; although again these leagues are commonly referred to as 'non-League'.

The exact number of clubs varies from year to year as clubs join and leave leagues, fold or merge altogether, but an estimated average of 15 clubs per division implies that more than 7,000 teams of nearly 5,300 clubs are members of a league in the English men's football league system.

English football league system

The English football league system, also known as the football pyramid, is a series of interconnected leagues for men's association football clubs in England, with six teams from Wales and one from Guernsey also competing. The system has a hierarchical format with promotion and relegation between leagues at different levels, allowing even the smallest club the theoretical possibility of ultimately rising to the very top of the system, although in practice it would take a team at the bottom levels at least two decades of consistently finishing at or near the top of each successive league to reach the top level, and even then additional restrictions, particularly in regard to stadium facilities, would then come into effect at the highest levels that could prevent a club from being allowed access to the top levels. There are more than 140 individual leagues, containing more than 480 divisions.

As there are no official definitions of any level below 11, any references to the structure at level 12 and below should not be regarded as definitive.

The pyramid for women's football in England runs separately to nine tiers and some England-based men's clubs play outside the English football league system.

The (English) Football League was created in 1888 by Aston Villa director William McGregor. It was dominated by those clubs who had supported professionalism. The twelve founding members consisted of six from Lancashire (Blackburn Rovers, Burnley, Bolton Wanderers, Accrington, Everton and Preston North End) and six from the Midlands (Aston Villa, Derby County, Notts County, Stoke, West Bromwich Albion and Wolverhampton Wanderers).

The system consists of a pyramid of leagues, bound together by the principle of promotion and relegation. A certain number of the most successful clubs in each league can rise to a higher league, whilst those that finish the season at the bottom of their league can find themselves sinking down a level. In addition to sporting performance, promotion is usually contingent on meeting criteria set by the higher league, especially concerning appropriate facilities and finances.

In theory it is possible for a lowly local amateur club to achieve annual promotions and within a few years rise to the pinnacle of the English game and become champions of the Premier League. While this may be unlikely in practice (at the very least, in the short run), there certainly is significant movement within the pyramid.

The top five levels contain one division each and are nationwide in scope. Below this, the levels have progressively more parallel leagues, with each covering progressively smaller geographic areas. Many leagues have more than one division. At the lower levels the existence of leagues becomes intermittent, although in some of the more densely populated areas there are leagues more than twenty layers below the Premier League. There are also leagues in various parts of the country which are not officially part of the system as they do not have formal agreements with other leagues, but are recognised at various levels by county football associations. Clubs from these leagues may, if they feel they meet the appropriate standard of play and have suitable facilities, apply to join a league which does form part of the system.

The seven levels immediately below the Premier League and English Football League are known as the National League System and come under the jurisdiction of The Football Association. It evolved over many years. In the most recent major re-organisation, two new leagues were entered at level six – the Conference North and Conference South (now National League North and South) – shifting the top divisions of the Southern League, Isthmian League and Northern Premier League down to level seven. In May 2014 The FA announced provisional plans for a new division between the English Football League and the National League which would include "B" teams of higher level clubs. They later reneged on the plan to include Premier League "B" teams in the new division and shortly thereafter scrapped the idea altogether.

The English football league system does not include the amateur version of the game often called Sunday league football. These leagues are independent entities with no promotion or relegation involving the football pyramid. However, some Sunday League clubs have been known to join pyramid leagues if they desire to progress higher. There are also some Saturday leagues which are not officially part of the pyramid, although teams frequently leave these for pyramid leagues. The FA admitted an erstwhile non-promoting Saturday league, the Lincolnshire League, to the pyramid in May 2017.

At the top is the single division of the Premier League (Level 1, which is often referred to as the "top flight"), containing 20 clubs, all of which, up to the 2010–11 season, were based in England. However, two Welsh teams (Swansea City and Cardiff City) have since played in the league. Below the Premier League is the English Football League (EFL), which is divided into three divisions of 24 clubs each: The Championship (Level 2), League One (Level 3) and League Two (Level 4). The 92 clubs in the Premier League and English Football League are all full-time professional clubs. They are often referred to as 'League' clubs because, before the establishment of the Premier League in 1992, the EFL included all 92 clubs, in four divisions. Clubs outside this group are referred to as 'non-League' clubs, although they too play most of their football in league-type competitions.

The top tier of non-League football is the National League. It contains a national division (National League) of 24 clubs (Level 5), and is the lowest level with a single nationwide league. There are two divisions at Level 6, covering the north (National League North) and south (National League South), with 22 clubs each. Some of these clubs are full-time professional and the others are semi-professional. Below the National League, some of the stronger clubs are semi-professional, but continuing down the tiers, soon all the clubs are amateur. Lower-level leagues also tend to cater for progressively smaller geographic regions.

Next down from the National League are three regional leagues, each associated with different geographical areas, although some overlap exists. They are the Northern Premier League (which covers the north of England, with one club from North Wales), Southern Football League (which covers the Midlands, south and southwest of England, with one club from South Wales) and the Isthmian League (which includes clubs from the south east of England as well as Guernsey from the Channel Islands). All of the leagues have Premier Divisions of 22 teams (Level 7). Below these, and split by region, the Northern Premier League and Southern Football League each have two parallel divisions of 20 teams (Level 8). The Isthmian League has three parallel level 8 divisions of 20 teams each as well.

Level 9 contains the top divisions of a large group of fourteen sub-regional leagues. Each of these leagues has a different divisional set up, but they all have one thing in common: there are yet more leagues below them, each covering smaller and smaller geographical levels.Being members of a league at a particular level also affects eligibility for Cup, or single-elimination, competitions.

In the case of the FA Cup and the FA Vase, some of the clubs in the lowest level in each do not compete. For instance the 2017-18 FA Cup saw 77 teams compete from Level 10 out of the 338 in total at that level.

Below Level 11 the pyramid becomes regional and the cups become accordingly regional. Further down the pyramid is split on a county basis, counties having their own cups accordingly. This excludes some tournaments marked "Senior Cups", which often are competitions between teams representing top professional clubs in a given district, and may be little more than derbies, such as the Gloucestershire Cup, which originally included all teams in Gloucestershire, but then came to be contested as a Bristol derby.

The table below shows the current structure of the system. For each division, its official name, sponsorship name (for levels 1–8, if it differs from its historic name) and number of clubs is given. At levels 1–8, each division promotes to the division(s) that lie directly above it and relegates to the division(s) that lie directly below it. Below that level, individual league articles detail promotion and relegation arrangements.

Level one in the pyramid, the top division of English football, is run by the Premier League (which gives its name to the competition in that division), the winners of which are regarded as the champions of England. Levels two to four are run by the English Football League. Together, these four divisions make up what is known as "league football".

The leagues below level four are classed as "non-League football", meaning they are outside the EFL. The leagues at levels five to eleven comprise the National League System (NLS), and come under the direct jurisdiction of the Football Association. The top level (level 5) of the NLS is known as "step 1" by the FA, the next (level 6) as "step 2", and so on.

The system is only defined as far as level 11. What follows is a representation of one possible structure, should the system be defined further.