Every A-League Club and What Defines It

There are twelve clubs in the A-League Men, they are spread across two countries and six Australian states and territories, and no two of them arrived the same way. Some were bought into existence by a foreign parent club. One was assembled in four months to fill a hole left by a collapsed licence. One is a rebadged National Soccer League club with a name older than the competition it plays in. This page takes all twelve, sets out what each one actually is, and puts the honours in a table so the pecking order is visible rather than argued about.

The direct answer, if that is what you came for: Sydney FC are the most successful club with five championships and four premierships. Melbourne Victory are the biggest by support. Western Sydney Wanderers are the only Australian club to have won the Asian Champions League. Auckland FC, admitted in 2024-25, have had the best two opening seasons any club in the league has managed. And the number of clubs is twelve rather than thirteen because Western United's participation agreement was terminated in August 2026.

The twelve clubs at a glance

Club	City	Home ground	First season	Championships	Premierships
Adelaide United	Adelaide	Coopers Stadium	2005-06	1	2
Auckland FC	Auckland	Go Media Stadium	2024-25	1	1
Brisbane Roar	Brisbane	Suncorp Stadium	2005-06	3	2
Central Coast Mariners	Gosford	Polytec Stadium	2005-06	3	3
Macarthur FC	Campbelltown	Campbelltown Sports Stadium	2020-21	0	0
Melbourne City	Melbourne	AAMI Park	2010-11	2	3
Melbourne Victory	Melbourne	AAMI Park	2005-06	4	3
Newcastle Jets	Newcastle	McDonald Jones Stadium	2005-06	1	1
Perth Glory	Perth	HBF Park	2005-06	0	1
Sydney FC	Sydney	Allianz Stadium	2005-06	5	4
Wellington Phoenix	Wellington	Hnry Stadium	2007-08	0	0
Western Sydney Wanderers	Parramatta	CommBank Stadium	2012-13	0	1

The two honours columns each add up to twenty-one once Western United's 2022 championship is included, which is the number of seasons completed between 2005-06 and 2025-26. That is the check worth running on any version of this table you find elsewhere: if the columns do not sum to the number of seasons played, something has been dropped.

How to read that table

Two cautions before anyone quotes a row from it.

The first is that the championship column and the premiership column measure different things and the Australian convention weights them the opposite way to most of Europe. Finishing top of the ladder over twenty-six matches wins the Premiers Plate. Winning a knockout series afterwards wins the championship, and it is the championship that supporters name when they say a club has won the league. Perth Glory have a premiership and no championship. Western Sydney Wanderers have a premiership and no championship. Neither club regards that as the same thing as an empty cabinet, and neither regards it as a title either.

The second is that the ground column ages faster than anything else here. Every home ground in the league except AAMI Park carries a sponsor name, and several have carried three in a decade. Wellington's ground was Sky Stadium until it became Hnry Stadium on 1 March 2026, and locals have called it the Cake Tin throughout. Gosford's ground has changed naming-rights partner repeatedly and is Central Coast Stadium to everyone who lives there.

• 12Clubs
• 2New Zealand clubs
• 26Regular season matches per club
• 6Finals places

The competition as constituted for the 2026-27 season. The club total has moved between eight and thirteen since 2005 and fell by one when Western United's participation agreement was terminated in August 2026.

Sydney FC: the establishment club

Founded in 2004 and never far from the top since. Sydney FC won the first championship in 2006 with Dwight Yorke in midfield and have added four more, in 2010, 2017, 2019 and 2020, alongside four premierships. Their 2016-17 side is generally treated as the strongest single season any club has produced.

They also hold a trophy nobody else can win again. Sydney FC won the Oceania Champions League in 2005, before Australia's move into the Asian Confederation took effect, which took them to the world club championship in Japan that December. It is a one-off artefact of a governance change and it will stay unique.

The club plays at Allianz Stadium at Moore Park, rebuilt and reopened in 2022 with about 42,500 seats, and the full picture of that ground is set out in the Allianz Stadium guide. Sydney FC's active support is The Cove, named for the original colonial settlement, and the club's defining rivalry is with Western Sydney Wanderers in the Sydney derby.

The criticism that has followed Sydney FC since 2005 is that they were positioned as the league's flagship in the country's largest city, given the biggest marquee budgets, and handed a stadium in the eastern suburbs while the game's actual heartland sat forty kilometres west. That grievance produced the Wanderers, and the Wanderers produced the fixture that now draws the league's largest crowds.

Melbourne Victory: the biggest club by support

Founded on 28 October 2004 and, in raw membership and travelling support, the largest club in the competition. Four championships in 2007, 2009, 2015 and 2018, three premierships and two Australia Cups.

Victory are the only club whose ordinary fixtures can justify moving to a 50,000-seat venue. Their 2007 grand final drew 55,436 at Docklands, which is covered in the Marvel Stadium guide, and they have used the roofed ground for big derbies and finals ever since. Their normal home is AAMI Park, shared with Melbourne City.

Ownership has been the club's complication rather than its results. A majority stake was approved for 777 Partners in February 2023, the arrangement did not settle, and Tony Bloom of Brighton and Hove Albion took roughly 19 per cent in March 2025. The playing side has been more stable than the boardroom, but neither has been quiet.

The active support is the North Terrace, and it is the group most directly involved in the events of December 2022 covered in the Melbourne derby guide.

Melbourne City: the franchise that bought a heart

Melbourne City began as Melbourne Heart, founded on 12 June 2009 and admitted for 2010-11 in red and white stripes, as a deliberately locally-owned alternative to Victory. That version lasted three and a half seasons.

On 23 January 2014 City Football Group bought 80 per cent for a reported $12 million, took the remaining 20 per cent in August 2015, and renamed the club Melbourne City on 5 June 2014. The kit went sky blue, the badge changed, and the club acquired a global recruitment network, a purpose-built academy at Cranbourne East and the deepest football operation in the league.

It worked, eventually. Three consecutive premierships in 2020-21, 2021-22 and 2022-23, a championship in 2021 and another in 2025 against Victory in the first all-Melbourne grand final. Jamie Maclaren became the league's record goalscorer while there.

What City have never solved is the crowd. A club built by an overseas owner on the ruins of a locally-owned one has a harder job selling itself to a city that already had a football club, and the honours have not closed that gap.

Western Sydney Wanderers: the club the league had to build

Founded on 4 April 2012 for a single reason: Gold Coast United's licence had been revoked, the league needed a twelfth club, and western Sydney — the largest football-playing population in the country — had been left without one for seven seasons.

The first season is the best debut anybody had until Auckland. The Wanderers won the 2012-13 premiership, including a ten-match winning run, and reached the grand final, losing 2-0 to Central Coast Mariners. Two seasons later they won the AFC Champions League, beating Al-Hilal 1-0 on aggregate, which remains the only time an Australian club has won it. Tony Popovic's line after the final — that a club called small the day before was now the biggest in Asia — is still quoted.

They have never won a championship. Three grand finals, in 2013, 2014 and 2016, and three defeats. A local consortium including Paul Lederer bought the club in 2014 for a reported $10 million. The home ground is CommBank Stadium in Parramatta, opened in 2019 with 30,000 seats, and the Red and Black Bloc is the most organised active support group in the country.

Adelaide United: the Reds and the cup habit

Adelaide United were founded in 2003 and played the last two National Soccer League seasons before becoming an A-League founding member. They won the first Premiers Plate in 2005-06 and lost the grand final to Sydney FC, then did the double in 2015-16 after starting that season bottom of the ladder.

Their real distinction is the knockout cup. Three Australia Cup titles, in 2014, 2018 and 2019, is more than any other club. They also reached the 2008 AFC Champions League final, which no Australian club had done before and only the Wanderers have bettered since.

Coopers Stadium at Hindmarsh, capacity around 16,500, is the only purpose-built football ground any A-League club calls home and the atmosphere reflects that. The club's oldest rivalry is with Melbourne Victory, which supporters of both call the Original Rivalry and which predates every derby in the competition.

Brisbane Roar: Roarcelona and the 36-match run

Founded in 2004 as Queensland Roar and renamed Brisbane Roar in 2009. Three championships in 2011, 2012 and 2014, two premierships, and a four-year stretch under Ange Postecoglou that changed how Australian coaches thought about possession football.

That side set a national record 36-match unbeaten run across the 2010-11 and 2011-12 seasons and won the 2011 grand final from 2-0 down in the last two minutes of extra time before taking it on penalties. The nickname Roarcelona was applied half in mockery and stuck because the football justified it.

The club's problem since has been the ground. Suncorp Stadium, described in full in the Suncorp Stadium guide, seats about 52,500 and is a rugby league and rugby union venue first. For 2026-27 the Roar split thirteen home matches between Suncorp and Kayo Stadium at Redcliffe because Suncorp was unavailable across a stretch of the summer. Playing a home season across two grounds forty kilometres apart is not a small thing for a membership base.

Central Coast Mariners: the smallest budget, the biggest treble

Gosford has a catchment smaller than most Melbourne council areas and the Mariners have three championships and three premierships, which is more than Melbourne City and the same number of championships as Brisbane.

The 2023-24 season is the high point of the club's existence and arguably of the league's. The Mariners won the premiership, won the championship with a 3-1 win over Melbourne Victory in extra time at their own ground, and won the AFC Cup, Asia's second-tier continental competition — a treble no Australian club had assembled before.

They have done all of it while repeatedly selling their best players, running the smallest budget in the competition, and being cited every few years as the club most likely to fall over. Ownership passed to Total Soccer Growth Holdings in June 2026. The ground at Gosford, currently Polytec Stadium, holds about 20,000 and sits directly on the water, which makes it the most photogenic venue in the league and one of the coldest in July.

Newcastle Jets: the plate, at last

Newcastle entered as a National Soccer League club in 2000, became the Jets for the A-League in 2005, and won the championship in 2008 with a 1-0 win over the Mariners. Then came seventeen years of very little.

The 2025-26 season ended that. Under Mark Milligan in his first season as a senior coach, with the youngest squad in the competition, the Jets recorded their highest finish, a ten-match unbeaten run and an eight-match winning streak, and clinched the club's first Premiers Plate in the penultimate round. They had already won the 2025 Australia Cup, beating Heidelberg United 3-1 after extra time. Two trophies in a season for a club that had won nothing since 2008.

McDonald Jones Stadium holds about 30,000 and hosted the 2018 grand final, which the Jets lost 1-0 to Melbourne Victory. The club is owned by Maverick Sports Partners after a period in which the league itself had to keep it alive. Its derby is the F3 against Central Coast, named for the motorway between them.

Perth Glory: the oldest name in the league

Perth Glory were founded in 1995, joined the National Soccer League in 1996-97, won NSL championships in 2003 and 2004, and came into the A-League as a founding member with a supporter base already a decade old. That makes them the oldest continuously operating name in the competition.

The A-League record is thinner: one premiership, in 2018-19, and no championship. They have lost two grand finals, in 2012 and in 2019 at home, the second on penalties in front of 56,371 people at Perth Stadium — the largest crowd ever to watch an A-League grand final, described in the Optus Stadium guide.

HBF Park, the old Perth Oval, holds about 20,500 and is one of the better rectangular grounds in the country. The Pelligra Group took ownership in 2024 after a difficult period. Distance is the club's permanent tax: every away trip is at least a three-hour flight and usually more, on a time zone two or three hours behind the eastern seaboard.

Sydney FC5

Melbourne Victory4

Brisbane Roar3

Central Coast Mariners3

Melbourne City2

Adelaide United1

Newcastle Jets1

Auckland FC1

Grand final wins from 2006 to 2026 inclusive. Western United's single championship, won in 2022, is excluded because the club's participation agreement was terminated in August 2026. Clubs with no championship are not listed.

Show the numbers

A-League Men championships by club

Item	Value
Sydney FC	5
Melbourne Victory	4
Brisbane Roar	3
Central Coast Mariners	3
Melbourne City	2
Adelaide United	1
Newcastle Jets	1
Auckland FC	1

Wellington Phoenix: the club that should not work

Wellington Phoenix were created in 2007 to replace the New Zealand Knights, whose licence had been revoked after two dismal seasons, and were widely expected to last about as long. They are now the fourth-longest-tenured club in the competition.

No premiership and no championship, and for most of their existence a licence renewed on short terms that made long-range planning close to impossible. What they have instead is a genuine national function: they are the professional destination for New Zealand players who would otherwise have to leave home at eighteen, and a steady share of the All Whites have come through them.

Hnry Stadium, the Wellington Regional Stadium, holds 34,500 and is far too big for an ordinary Phoenix crowd, which is a familiar problem across the league. Since 2024-25 they have had a domestic rival for the first time, and the Auckland fixture has given the club something it never had.

Auckland FC: the fastest start in the league's history

Founded on 14 March 2024, admitted for 2024-25, and immediately better than everyone. Auckland won the Premiers Plate in their first season, which no expansion club had done since the Wanderers, then won the championship in 2026, beating Sydney FC 1-0 at Go Media Stadium in front of 28,374 with Cameron Howieson taking the Joe Marston Medal.

The club is owned by Bill Foley's Black Knight Sports and Entertainment, with Ali Williams and Anna Mowbray as co-owners, plays in electric blue and black at Mount Smart, and has an active support group called The Port. The New Zealand derby against Wellington was one-sided in its first season and is the most valuable new fixture the league has created in a decade.

The caution worth stating: an owner with a portfolio of clubs can accelerate a start, and a start is not a foundation. Auckland's second act — holding a squad together after a championship, in a market that has not previously sustained one — is the part that will tell you whether the club is built or bought.

Macarthur FC: the newest club nobody outside Sydney can place

Macarthur FC were licensed in 2018 and entered in 2020-21, based at Campbelltown in Sydney's south-west, which is a genuinely distinct region rather than an overspill of the Wanderers' territory. Black and white, nicknamed the Bulls, playing at Campbelltown Sports Stadium.

No premiership, no championship and no grand final. What they do have is two Australia Cups, in 2022 and 2024, which is the same number as Sydney FC and Melbourne Victory. A club with fewer than two hundred league matches to its name has won the national knockout cup twice, which says something about how the cup rewards a well-drilled squad over a season-long one.

The strategic question hanging over Macarthur is whether Sydney can support three A-League clubs. The answer so far is a qualified one: the club exists, the crowds are modest, and nobody argues it should not.

The clubs that are gone

Four clubs have left the competition, all of them by losing a licence.

Club	City	Seasons	Why it ended	Best result
New Zealand Knights	Auckland	2005-06 to 2006-07	Licence revoked	Last both seasons
North Queensland Fury	Townsville	2009-10 to 2010-11	Licence revoked, finances	Seventh
Gold Coast United	Gold Coast	2009-10 to 2011-12	Licence revoked, February 2012	Third
Western United	Melbourne west	2019-20 to 2024-25	Agreement terminated, August 2026	Champions, 2022

New Zealand Knights played 2005-06 and 2006-07, finished last both times, and had their licence revoked. Wellington Phoenix were created to take the slot.

North Queensland Fury entered in 2009-10, lasted two seasons in Townsville, and were removed on financial grounds. The catchment was never large enough and the travel costs were punishing.

Gold Coast United entered the same season under Clive Palmer's ownership, and the relationship between owner and governing body deteriorated to the point of a capped-crowd protest and a banner directed at the FFA. The licence was revoked in February 2012. The vacancy created Western Sydney Wanderers, which is the most productive thing the episode achieved.

Western United entered in 2019-20 and won the 2022 championship in their third season, beating Melbourne City 2-0. The finances then collapsed. The parent company was placed into liquidation, Football Australia moved on the club licence, the APL placed both the men's and women's sides into conditional hibernation for 2025-26, and in August 2026 the participation agreement was terminated for breaches including the national club licensing regulations. A club can therefore win the championship and be gone four years later, which is the clearest statement anyone needs about how the licensing model works.

• Sydney25.0%
• New Zealand16.7%
• Melbourne16.7%
• Regional New South Wales16.7%
• Other capitals25.0%

Home market of each club in the 2026-27 A-League Men. Sydney counts Sydney FC, Western Sydney Wanderers and Macarthur FC; the New Zealand figure counts Auckland and Wellington. Central Coast and Newcastle are counted separately from Sydney because they are distinct markets an hour or more up the coast.

Show the numbers

Where the twelve clubs are based

Item	Value
Sydney	3
New Zealand	2
Melbourne	2
Regional New South Wales	2
Other capitals	3

Why the list does not change on merit

The A-League has no promotion or relegation. A club is in because it holds a participation agreement and out because it does not, and the four departures listed above were all licensing decisions rather than sporting ones.

That has two consequences worth understanding. The first is that a club at the bottom of the ladder has no existential incentive attached to results, which changes how the last two months of a season feel compared with a European league. The second is that the entry route for a new club runs entirely through the boardroom: ownership funding, a stadium agreement, a women's team, an academy and compliance with Football Australia's licensing regulations, assessed at the discretion of the Australian Professional Leagues.

A national second tier now exists beneath the A-League and it has changed the shape of the pyramid, but it does not yet connect to the top division by results and no timetable for that has been set. Anyone arriving from England or Italy should assume the ladder is a ranking, not a mechanism.

How a club joins, and how it leaves

The sequence below is the one every club on this page went through in one direction or the other. It is worth reading before anyone argues that a struggling side should be relegated, because relegation is not the mechanism that removes a club here and never has been.

1. 1The bidA consortium assembles ownership funding, a stadium arrangement, a training base, a women's team and an academy, and puts a market case for a city or region the league wants to reach.
2. 2The assessmentThe Australian Professional Leagues assess the bid against the competition's own commercial priorities and against Football Australia's national club licensing regulations. The decision is discretionary and there is no appeal on sporting grounds.
3. 3The agreementA successful bid receives a participation agreement setting out obligations on solvency, squad spending, facilities and the women's programme. This is the licence, and it is a contract rather than an entitlement.
4. 4The driftWhere an owner's funding fails, the breaches accumulate: unpaid entitlements, an unmet licensing condition, a parent company in trouble. Football Australia and the league both have visibility of this long before supporters do.
5. 5The exitThe league suspends or terminates the agreement. New Zealand Knights, North Queensland Fury and Gold Coast United went this way, and Western United went into conditional hibernation for 2025-26 before termination in August 2026.

A compressed summary of the entry and exit process as it has operated since the Australian Professional Leagues took control of the competition. It describes the shape of the process rather than the contents of any particular participation agreement, which are commercial and not published.

The important detail is at the end. Termination is a contractual act, not a sporting one, and it can happen to a club that has recently won something. Western United were champions in 2022 and gone by 2026.

Ownership: who actually owns these clubs

The honest summary is that ownership is the least stable fact about the competition. Melbourne City are wholly owned by City Football Group. Auckland FC sit inside Bill Foley's multi-club portfolio. Perth Glory passed to the Pelligra Group in 2024, Newcastle to Maverick Sports Partners, Central Coast to Total Soccer Growth Holdings in June 2026. Melbourne Victory's ownership has been contested since 2023. Western Sydney Wanderers have been under the same local consortium since 2014, which now counts as unusual longevity.

The league itself changed hands too. Football Australia agreed to relinquish control of the professional competitions in 2019, and the clubs took ownership through the Australian Professional Leagues. The clubs therefore own the competition that licenses them, which is a structure with obvious advantages and one obvious weakness: when a member club fails, the other members are both the regulator and the creditor.

Which club should you support

If you live in one of the twelve markets, the answer is the local one and the rest of this section is decoration. If you do not, three honest filters.

Pick by ground. AAMI Park is the best rectangular stadium in Australia and both Melbourne clubs use it. Coopers Stadium is the only purpose-built football ground in the league. Gosford is the prettiest. If you will attend rather than watch, the venue matters more than the badge.

Pick by active support. The Red and Black Bloc at the Wanderers, The Cove at Sydney FC and Victory's North Terrace are the three largest organised groups, and the experience in and around them is a different sport from a seat on the halfway line.

Pick by the football. Brisbane in the Postecoglou years, Sydney FC in 2016-17 and Central Coast in 2023-24 are the three sides most often named as the best the league has produced. Two of those clubs are still building the same way.

What changes next

Three things to watch rather than assume. The club count is twelve and a Canberra entry has been discussed for later this decade without a confirmed date. The finals series and the regular-season length have both been altered repeatedly and neither is settled. And the grand final hosting arrangement, after the Sydney deal announced in December 2022 that triggered the supporter protests, has reverted in practice to the higher-placed finalist — 2024 at Gosford, 2025 at AAMI Park, 2026 at Mount Smart.

Where to go next

For the two fixtures that define the competition, read the Melbourne derby guide and the Sydney derby guide. For the grounds themselves, AAMI Park covers the home of both Melbourne clubs, Allianz Stadium covers Sydney FC's, Suncorp Stadium covers Brisbane's and Accor Stadium covers the ground that has held the largest derby crowd in the league's history.

For the national teams these clubs feed, see the Socceroos guide and the Matildas guide. For the game below the professional tier, country football in Australia covers how the sport is organised outside the capitals. The broader Australia hub links the rest of the section and the sports index covers the other codes.