National Football Museum
Opening Hours
About
A national museum dedicated to association football, housing an extensive collection of memorabilia spanning the sport's history. Exhibits cover England's leagues, national teams and World Cups, including the 1966 victory, alongside displays on women's football. Interactive features include penalty shootout challenges, passing accuracy tests and VR experiences. The collection highlights trophies, football culture and notable players. A gift shop sells football-related items. The museum occupies multiple floors, with one section focusing on black players' contributions to the game. Displays feature Manchester City alongside broader English football heritage. Temporary exhibitions and events run alongside permanent collections.
Customer Reviews
Great experience for any football fan. The collection of memorabilia is impressive, covering a huge range of football history. I especially enjoyed the interactive games on the top floor. Only reason for 4 stars instead of 5 is that it is quite crowded, making it a bit hard to see everything at your own pace. Definitely worth a visit if you're in Manchester!
A lot of interesting football history, about Englands leagues for both men and women, their national teams and worldcups. Mind that you'll need at most 1 to 2 hours to see eveything so to be frank the content was a bit underwhelming as the internet claimed it would be 3-4 hours. 1st floor is where you can easily spend an hour, covering English football history and world cups. 2nd floor is mostly a diverse selection of interactive games like penalty kicks with a leaderbord you can get your high score on, and skill and passing games. Mind that the penalty challenge costs 3 quid for 3 kicks. 3nd floor is entirely dedicated to black heritage. While I fully support the black cause and acknowledge the hard times and racism in football, frankly it's a bit too much for a full floor. Mind that although most likely unpopular, this is my personal opinion. It's not what I came for and while it was quite a busy saturday hardly anyone was on this floor, and anyone coming in while I was there quickly left. I know we're living in the woke decade and a venue like this would not risk reserving too few squate feet for this topic but it's simply too much. So to summarize my experience: Floor 1: Great value, full history of English football. Floor 2: Interactive games, if you have kids you can definately keep them occupied for an hour on this floor. Floor 3: You'll need 10 minutes tops.
Location good, easy to find. Website mentions disabled parking bay on Todd Street but staff didn't know if the unmarked layby (double yellow lines) was what the website referred to. Good exhibits. First floor is like a maze though so if you don't like the feeling of being trapped I would avoid it. The lift has a semi transparent glass floor and is a clever diagonal design, going vertically and horizontally at the same time. When I first used it I was a little scared, only because of a silly fear of heights, but I soon got used to it. The reason for knocking off one star is due to the out-of-date interactive football ground display. It says it's all the grounds of the EFL but, according to staff, is based on 2012 information, so my team's ground is not featured. The small cafe on the ground floor was very good, freshly cooked vegan pizza for my fussy daughter and my husband and I shared a substantial cheese and potato pasty. Flat white coffee perfectly good and a good selection of chilled drinks. All of the staff were very, very good, friendly, helpful and even funny! Definitely worth a trip and most tickets give access for a full year.
