Schools Football Week 2026

What is Schools’ Football Week?

 Let’s support even more pupils to enjoy the benefits of schools’ football

Schools’ Football Week is an ongoing ESFA initiative designed as an opportunity for schools, teams and clubs from across the country to embrace schools’ football and the wellbeing benefits it provides to pupils and players. It celebrates the importance of schools’ football, competitive or otherwise, to pupils across England and provides teachers and coaches with tools and a motivation to further discuss the benefits of schools’ football within their educational environment.

The 2022 SFW campaign saw us embrace the growing participation in girls’ football in schools – promoting the importance of equal access to schools’ football for both girls and boys. The campaign alone saw over 56,000 girls benefitting from footballing opportunities across the 7^th – 13^th February. In this new season, following the incredible journey of the Lionesses and continuing the trend the ESFA have seen over the last two years, we’ve seen the highest number of girls’ entries into National Cup competitions, with over 120 schools entering girls’ teams for the first time. We are going to continue in our pursuit to celebrate girls’ and all schools’ football in 2026.

How to get involved in School’s Football Week 2026?

 Inter-house or intra-school tournaments

Any school can run an inter-house (or inter-form) or intra-school football tournament for boys and/or girls. This could be hosted at lunchtime, after school or during PE lessons and yours could take any format that you wish. For example, a group phase followed by a final, or just a straight forward knockout competition. You could get other pupils involved by making banners to support teams or even writing supporter songs. Maybe you could host an all-girls tournament or encourage a record number of girls in your own school to take part in activity, just like in our National Cups.

 Football formats 

You can choose to use whichever format of football best suits your requirements: 11-a-side, 9-a-side, 7-a-side, 6-a-side, indoor 5-a-side or even futsal if you have the facilities available. The objective of Schools’ Football Week is to get as many children playing or talking about football as possible and enjoying the game in a safe and secure environment, regardless of their ability. Remember: children should only play in 2-year age bands in accordance with FA rules.

 Pupil activity for lunchtime…or any time

There are some other great examples of how you can introduce football into the school day for Schools’ Football Week 2026 – we’ve put a short list together for you below, but maybe you have other ideas you’d like to try too –

• Coaching sessions for pupils
• PE warm-up sessions based on football drills
• Crossbar challenges (you could try pupils v teachers!)
• Penalty shootout games or competitions
• Freestyle football skills

How to Register for School’s Football Week 2026?

We have set up a link to register your school as taking part in Schools’ Football Week. In February 2022, we registered over 142,000 pupils taking part in activity, plus over 57,000 girls and over 800 schools – we hope to be able to push this even further in 2026. However big or small your participation will be, it all counts, it’s all valuable and it all matters. You are helping us to create something exciting and wonderful!

Click here to register for SFW 2026