How to complete the 92 Club in 2026: tips from groundhoppers

The challenge

Visiting all 92 grounds in the English football pyramid — every Premier League, Championship, League One, and League Two stadium — is the original groundhopping challenge. The 92 Club (the official one, recognised by the Football Grounds Guide) requires you to have watched a competitive first-team match at every current ground. It's not about driving past. It's not about stadium tours. You need to have been inside, watching football, at all 92.

It sounds achievable until you start counting. Clubs get promoted, relegated, and sometimes move grounds entirely. New stadiums open. Old ones close. The list shifts every season, and grounds you've ticked off can become irrelevant while new ones appear that you've never heard of. Completing the 92 is a moving target — and that's what makes it genuinely difficult rather than merely time-consuming.

If you're serious about finishing in 2026 or starting a serious push this year, here's how to approach it strategically.

Strategy 1: Prioritise the vulnerable grounds

The single most important piece of advice for 92 Club aspirants: do the League Two grounds first. These are the clubs most likely to drop out of the Football League entirely (replaced by a National League promoted side) or to move to a new stadium. If Barrow get relegated to the National League, their ground leaves the 92 list and your visit still counts — but you needed to have visited while they were in the league.

Similarly, clubs with confirmed new stadium plans should be visited at their current ground immediately. Once Luton moved to Kenilworth Road's replacement, the old ground would no longer count. Stay informed about relocation plans and treat them as deadlines.

Relegation candidates in League Two at any given moment should be near the top of your to-do list. Check the table in January and book those trips.

Strategy 2: Cluster by geography

England is a small country, but 92 grounds spread across it covers a lot of ground. The most efficient approach is geographic clustering — grouping nearby stadiums into single weekends or short trips:

The Northwest cluster: Liverpool (Anfield + Goodison/new stadium), Manchester (Etihad + Old Trafford), Wigan, Bolton, Blackburn, Burnley, Preston, Blackpool, Morecambe. Nine grounds within a 50-mile radius. A long weekend with Saturday and Tuesday fixtures can tick three or four.

The London cluster: Fourteen to sixteen grounds depending on the season. Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham, West Ham, Crystal Palace, Fulham, Brentford, QPR, Millwall, Charlton, Leyton Orient, AFC Wimbledon, Sutton, Bromley. Living in London or making repeated trips is the most efficient approach — one ground per matchday across a season.

The Midlands cluster: Aston Villa, Birmingham, Wolves, West Brom, Walsall, Burton, Coventry, Leicester, Nottingham (x2), Derby. Eleven grounds reachable from a Birmingham base within an hour.

The Northeast corridor: Sunderland, Newcastle, Middlesbrough, Hartlepool, Darlington (if in league), plus the Yorkshire grounds (Leeds, Sheffield x2, Huddersfield, Bradford, Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham, Harrogate). A week's holiday in the north with midweek fixtures can cover six to eight.

Strategy 3: Use midweek fixtures

Saturday 3pm fixtures are the traditional groundhopping slot, but midweek matches — Tuesday and Wednesday League Cup, EFL Trophy, and rescheduled league games — offer several advantages:

Less demand: Tickets are easier to get, even at popular grounds
Double-headers: Saturday ground + Tuesday ground in the same trip extends your weekend
Lower-league availability: League One and Two clubs frequently have midweek fixtures with walk-up availability

The EFL Trophy (Papa Johns Trophy or whatever it's currently sponsored as) is particularly useful: it features lower-league clubs in matches that rarely sell out, often on quiet Tuesday nights. Perfect for ticking off grounds without the Saturday fixture competition.

The hardest grounds to tick off

Some grounds are harder than others. Here's what experienced 92 Club completers say about the trickiest:

Arsenal (Emirates Stadium): High demand, membership required for most fixtures, expensive. Target a League Cup early round or a less fashionable league fixture. Alternatively, a general-sale ticket for a Europa League group match is often available.

Liverpool (Anfield): Similar to Arsenal — massively oversubscribed. The hospitality route is expensive but guaranteed. Otherwise, target cup fixtures or apply through the official ballot well in advance.

Tottenham (Tottenham Hotspur Stadium): The newest ground on the list and always in demand. NFL games also count if you're flexible on the sport, though purists prefer a football match.

Plymouth Argyle (Home Park): Not hard to get a ticket — hard to get to. It's the most geographically isolated ground in the 92, sitting in the far southwest of England. Plan it as part of a Devon/Cornwall trip and accept that it's a five-hour drive from most of the country.

Remote League Two grounds: Carlisle, Barrow, and Morecambe in the northwest; Exeter in the southwest. These require dedicated trips because there's nothing else from the 92 nearby. Combine with a walking holiday or a non-football day to justify the travel.

Budget tips

Completing the 92 is not cheap, but it's not as expensive as it first appears if you plan smartly:

League Two tickets: Often 15-22 GBP. Some of the best value in English football.
Advance rail tickets: Book Split tickets via Trainsplit or buy Advance singles on the Trainline app 6-12 weeks ahead. A Manchester to London advance can be 25 GBP vs 100+ on the day.
Away days over home matches: If you follow a club, their away fixtures naturally tick off grounds. Twelve to fifteen away days a season can cover a quarter of the 92 over four seasons — while doing something you'd do anyway.
Hospitality for hard grounds: One 150 GBP hospitality package at Arsenal or Liverpool is cheaper than five failed attempts at getting a regular ticket plus the wasted travel costs.
Groundhopping groups: Organised groundhopping coaches exist for lower-league fixtures. Shared transport costs mean a day out to two League Two grounds can cost under 30 GBP all-in.

A realistic total budget for the entire 92 — spread over 3-5 years, combining your own club's away days with dedicated hopping trips — is 3,000-6,000 GBP including tickets, transport, and food. That's roughly the cost of one Premier League season ticket in London.

The moving target problem

Every May, the 92 changes. Promotions from the National League add a new ground. Relegations from League Two remove one. Occasionally, a club moves stadium (Brentford to the Gtech, Tottenham to the new ground) and the old tick becomes void.

Your approach:

Accept it: You will never "finish" permanently. The 92 at the moment you complete it is your achievement.
Stay ahead: If you're at 88/92, prioritise the four remaining grounds early in the season — don't wait until April when relegation and promotion are decided.
Track properly: Know exactly where you stand at all times. Which grounds have you done? Which are at risk?

Tracking your progress

The 92 Club challenge is only satisfying if you can see your progress clearly. Spreadsheets work but lack personality. Photos get lost in camera rolls. What you need is a system that shows which grounds you've visited, which remain, and how your number has grown over time.

Footbeen was built with groundhoppers in mind. Every English league ground is in the database — Premier League through League Two. Log a match, and the stadium is ticked off your list. Your grounds page shows every stadium you've visited, and the gap between where you are and 92 is immediately visible. As the league composition changes each season, your historical visits remain — the ground was valid when you went, and Footbeen preserves that record.

Whether you're at 12 or 89, the path to 92 is clearer when you can see it mapped out. Start logging. Start planning. And get those League Two grounds done before the season ends.