The 92 Club: complete guide to visiting every English Football League ground (2026)

What is the 92 Club?

The 92 Club is an informal society for football fans who have watched a competitive first-team match at every ground in the top four tiers of English football — the Premier League, the Championship, League One, and League Two. That's 20 + 24 + 24 + 24 = 92 clubs, hence the name.

Membership isn't automatic. You apply, with evidence if they want it, and pay a small fee. The society maintains a list of members that runs into the thousands. But most people who chase the 92 never formally join. The motivation is the list itself — the quiet satisfaction of ticking off every ground, not the membership card.

How did the 92 Club start?

The society was founded in 1978 by a group of supporters who had completed the full set of English Football League grounds. At the time, the Football League had four divisions — First, Second, Third, Fourth — and 92 clubs, so the number carried through. When the Premier League broke away in 1992, the total stayed 92: the top division shrank to 20, the lower tiers expanded to 24 each, and the symmetry held.

The 92 predates modern groundhopping culture. It's older than away-days being broadcast on TV, older than Twitter, older than the app era. It's arguably the most durable tradition in British football fandom that has nothing to do with a specific club.

The 92 is a moving target

Here's the part most people don't realise until they're deep into it: the 92 list changes every year.

Clubs get promoted into the top four tiers. Clubs get relegated out. Clubs move stadiums (Tottenham, West Ham, Brighton, Everton — every decade brings a new one). Occasionally a club gets wound up or expelled (Bury FC, Macclesfield Town) and a replacement is voted in from the National League.

There are two common interpretations of the 92 Club:

The strict version. You need to have visited every ground that is currently in the top four tiers, at the current stadium. If Brentford moves from Griffin Park to the Gtech Community Stadium, your Griffin Park visit doesn't count anymore — you have to visit the new ground.
The lifetime version. Any ground that was in the top four tiers at the time of your visit counts forever. Old Trafford in 1998, Highfield Road (pre-relocation Coventry), Plough Lane (original), Boothferry Park (Hull). Your list never shrinks, only grows.

Most self-respecting 92ers use a version of the lifetime rule with an asterisk: you've "done the 92" if you've been to every current ground OR the ground each club was playing at when you visited them. Both traditions are valid. Pick one and be consistent.

Why 92 is harder than it sounds

On paper: one match a week, 92 weeks, done. In practice, it almost never works like that.

The popular grounds sell out. Old Trafford, Anfield, the Emirates, Stamford Bridge — these are member-only for away allocations and sold out for home. You may need to join a membership scheme or pay for a hospitality ticket.
Fixture scheduling. You don't control when your local club plays away at a ground you need. Your life has to accommodate random Tuesday-night trips to the other side of the country.
Relegation and promotion reset the list. A club you were saving for next season drops to the National League before you get there. Its ground stops counting. Meanwhile a different club you've never heard of gets promoted and joins the target list.
Stadium moves. Every few seasons a top-four-tier club moves. If you were in the strict camp, your previous visit vanishes.

Most people who have completed the 92 took somewhere between 5 and 30 years to do it. It's an endurance challenge, not a sprint.

How to start the 92 Club

1. Decide your rule set

Strict (current grounds only) or lifetime (any ground that was in the 92 at the time of visit). Either is legitimate. The important thing is to pick one before you start counting, so your number doesn't keep moving on you.

2. Count what you already have

Most English football fans with a few years of away-days under their belt will find they've already got 10-20 grounds ticked off. Old Trafford because of a Champions League night. Wembley for an England friendly. A handful of away days. Before you plan new trips, figure out where you actually stand.

3. Target the hard ones early

Anfield, Old Trafford, the Emirates, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Stamford Bridge, Villa Park — these are the grounds that require planning months ahead. Join members' schemes, set calendar reminders for ticket release dates, be willing to travel for a mid-table fixture.

4. Pair up lower-tier grounds geographically

A midweek trip to the East Midlands can knock off Derby, Nottingham Forest, and Notts County across two days. A Saturday in Yorkshire can hit Huddersfield, Leeds, and Bradford. Plan routes, not single matches.

5. Track everything, every time

The biggest regret every 92er has is not tracking consistently from day one. Log the match the moment you get home. Record the date, the teams, the ground, the result. Your memory will lie to you about whether a visit was League Cup or league, whether it was away or neutral — the details matter for proving 92 Club status later.

Tools for tracking your progress

Historically, 92ers kept paper logbooks. Ticket stubs glued in, programmes stacked, dates scrawled by hand. The notebook tradition is romantic and still works if that's your style.

Spreadsheets came next — a Google Sheet with a row per club, columns for visit date, opposition, result. Searchable, backup-able. Better than paper for practical purposes.

Apps are where the hobby is now. Footbeen is built for exactly this kind of goal. The Premier League, Championship, League One, and League Two are all pre-loaded. The Grounds tab gives you a progress bar per league — Premier League 9/20, Championship 11/26 — so you can see exactly where you are in the 92 at any time. Every stadium lights up on your personal map as you visit it. The match catalogue goes back to 2010, so you can retrospectively log old visits in seconds.

Whatever you use, the principle is the same: a match you didn't log is a match that might not count. Track every time.

Special-case grounds

A few grounds deserve a mention for the quirks they add to a 92 campaign:

Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Opened 2019, replacing White Hart Lane (1899-2017). If you did the White Hart Lane era but not the new ground, your 92 is now out of date under strict rules.
Bramall Lane. Home of Sheffield United, one of the oldest grounds in world football, continuously used since 1855.
AFC Wimbledon's Plough Lane (new). Different from the original Plough Lane. AFC Wimbledon moved to the new stadium in 2020. Most groundhoppers count the original Plough Lane as a separate ground.
Everton's new stadium. Opened in 2025 at Bramley-Moore Dock. If you did Goodison Park for decades, your 92 needs an update.
MK Dons. Stadium MK is a functionally modern ground shared between the football club and other sports — straightforward to visit but unloved by traditionalists.

Common questions

Do I need to watch the whole match for it to count?

Presence at kick-off is the convention. If you left at half-time or got there late, you were still there. The 92 Club itself doesn't police this.

Does a pre-season friendly count?

Most 92ers say yes, as long as it was a first-team competitive or semi-competitive fixture at the ground. Reserve matches and academy fixtures are usually excluded. Testimonials and cup matches count.

What happens if a ground is demolished before I visit it?

Tough luck — that ground is off your list forever. Highbury (old Arsenal), Boleyn Ground (old West Ham), White Hart Lane (old Spurs), Roker Park (old Sunderland) are now unreachable. If you were there, lifetime rules preserve them; otherwise they're ghosts on the list.

Can I include non-league grounds?

For the 92 Club specifically, no — the target is the top four tiers of the English pyramid. Non-league is a separate and equally rich groundhopping tradition. Many 92ers go on to chase the 116 Club (National League), the 208 Club, and beyond.

How do I actually join the 92 Club society?

Search for the "92 Club" society online and apply through their website. They ask for evidence for recent visits (tickets, programmes, photographs) and charge a modest fee. Membership is for life.

Start your 92

The 92 is one of the great long-term projects in football fandom. It takes years. It rewards patience. It gives you a reason to spend a Tuesday night at Gillingham or a Sunday at Scunthorpe that would otherwise never feel worth the drive.

The fastest way to see where you are today is to log every match you've already attended in Footbeen. The app will show you instantly how many of the current 92 you've ticked off — and which clubs to target next. Free on iOS and Android, 472,000+ fixtures ready to tap, every English league in the catalogue.