Where will women’s football in England be in a decade’s time? How can we possibly begin to imagine the scale of the interest, attendances and participation then? How will the game on the pitch have developed, with each generation training and playing in better and better environments and at younger ages? It’s near impossible to make even educated guesses.

Women’s football in England is at a crossroads. The Women’s Super League and Women’s Super League 2 are now run independently of the Football Association, leading to increased outside investment, the rise of multi-club ownership groups, and the million-pound transfer barrier being broken twice in one summer. Minimum standards in the WSL and WSL2 have also been extended or raised and, while there is always talk of maintaining the connection between players and supporters, the women’s game is hurtling along a Premier League-trodden path at a fierce pace.

How much has actually been done differently will no doubt be clearer in 10 years’ time, when there could well be a gathering buildup to the first home World Cup since 1966, with England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland having submitted a sole bid to host the tournament. The tournament provides the FA and WSL Football with a shared focal point, an opportunity to explode the women’s game domestically.

Looking back at the past 10 years and dissecting how far the game has progressed in that time offers a glimpse into the potential. The average WSL attendance in 2015, with the league running from March to October, was 1,076, up from 728 the previous year. That was in part due to a boost provided by the Women’s World Cup in Canada and England’s success in getting to the semi-finals, where they lost 2-1 to Japan. So far in the 2025-26 season, the average attendance in the WSL has been 6,884, with Arsenal’s average home crowd of 36,214 doing a lot of heavy lifting. The lowest average attendance this season is West Ham’s 1,794, with the Hammers the only side to have an average below 2,000.

There has also been huge change when it comes to participation. According to FA data, there were nearly 2.5 million women and girls playing football in England in 2015. As of October this year, that number had risen to 6,476,326. And the day after England won the European Championship for a second successive time in Switzerland this summer there was a 196% increase in online searches for playing opportunities for women and girls. Female coaches and referees are also on rise – by 12% and 29% respectively compared with last year.

Additionally, in November the FA announced 90% of schools in England now offer girls equal access to football in PE lessons at key stage 2 and key stage 3 (ages seven to 14), which equates to 2.6 million girls and a 31% rise since 2020-21. That target was reached three years ahead of schedule and achieved in collaboration with the WSL and WSL2 title sponsors, Barclays.

“Football did so much for me – it got my life on track, it made me more confident and taught me so many skills that I’ve taken through life,” said Ian Wright, who, along with his fellow former Arsenal and England striker Kelly Smith, is part of Barclays’ push for greater participation in women’s football. “Girls should have that opportunity too and now they do. There’s still a lot to be done in terms of raising minimum standards and growing the game, and we mustn’t lose momentum, but this is a massive win for access to our national sport.”

Smith said: “When I was old enough to join a team, there weren’t any for girls so I played on the boys’ team. I’d have to get changed in the car because the changing rooms were boys only. When I was about eight, opposition parents weren’t happy that their boys were getting beaten by a team with a girl as their best player, and they refused to play us. I eventually got kicked off that team and then another, and my dad had to find me a girls’ team and drive me 45 minutes to training.”

The 2022 and 2025 Euros, along with the 2023 World Cup, have pushed the game forward to such an extent that Smith’s experience is alien to the newest generation of young female footballers. If the next 10 years is packed with strategies designed to improve the game year-on-year, such as investments in facilities, coaching, academies, refereeing, research, fan engagement and more, then the landscape in 2035 could be significantly greater, still.

Speaking after the submission by England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland of the joint bid to host the 2035 World Cup, the FA’s director of women’s football, Sue Day, said: “There will never be a women’s football strategy here that doesn’t have participation at its absolute heart. What is all of this for if not to inspire little girls to start running around with the football? So, we’re working really closely with the grassroots team here, and in the other three countries as well, and making sure we understand what it is that the girls want, how we best provide what they want, how we listen to them and how we fill the holes.”

Mark Bullingham, the FA’s chief executive, added: “If you look at the big picture, what we always say is until we’ve got the same number of girls playing football as boys, we’ve got a job to do. Clearly there’s a long way to go for that. We’re proud of the fact that we have 90% of schools [offering that equal access at key stage 2 and key stage 3] but we’re still not there in key stage 4, and there’s still some parts of the country where we need to be better.”

So, while it is indeed hard to make educated guesses about where the women’s game will be in 10 years’ time, the key is to make decisive interventions now to ensure that come the opening game of the 2035 World Cup, there is not a sense of 10 wasted years behind us.

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