Cardiff City
Also written as Cardiff.
The club
Cardiff City were founded in 1899 as Riverside AFC and took their present name in 1908. They have played at the Cardiff City Stadium since 2009; capacity is 33,316. The club are the Bluebirds and play in blue and white, colours they have worn since 1908 with one interruption: between 2012 and 2015, under Vincent Tan's ownership, the home shirt was red and black.
Recent seasons
Cardiff reached the Championship play-off semi-finals in 2019/20, finishing fifth with 73 points before losing to Fulham. They were eighth with 68 points in 2020/21, then declined sharply: 18th with 53 points in 2021/22, 21st with 49 in 2022/23, a recovery to 12th with 62 in 2023/24, and then bottom of the Championship in 2024/25 with 44 points, relegated to the third tier for the first time since 2002/03.
The response was immediate. In 2025/26 Cardiff finished second in League One with 91 points from 46 games, 27 wins, 10 draws and nine defeats, and were promoted as runners-up behind Lincoln City. Yousef Salech was top scorer with 14 league goals and 15 in all competitions. The season also produced a League Cup run to the quarter-finals, five ties with four wins, beginning with a 2-1 win over Swindon Town on 12 August 2025 and ending at home to Chelsea on 16 December 2025 in front of 33,027, the season's largest home crowd. The score in that quarter-final could not be established from the sources consulted. Cardiff went out of the FA Cup in the first round and reached the round of 32 in the EFL Trophy. Average home league attendance was 19,583, unusually high for the division.
Honours and landmarks
Cardiff won the FA Cup in 1927, beating Arsenal 1-0 at Wembley, and remain the only club from outside England to have won it. They have won the Welsh Cup 22 times, the second highest total in that competition's history. Their one Football League title is the Championship in 2012/13. They were League Cup runners-up in 2012. Record home attendance is 57,893 against Arsenal on 22 April 1953 at Ninian Park. Billy Hardy made 590 first-team appearances between 1911 and 1931 and Len Davies scored 179 goals between 1919 and 1931, both club records. The record fee paid is £15m for Emiliano Sala from Nantes on 19 January 2019; Sala died in a plane crash over the Channel two days later. The record fee received is £10m for Gary Medel to Inter Milan on 9 August 2014.
Notable scorelines
Record win: 9-2 against Thames in the Third Division South on 6 February 1932. Cardiff's biggest European win is 8-0 against Pezoporikos Larnaca in the first round of the Cup Winners' Cup on 16 September 1970. Record defeat: 2-11 at Sheffield United in the First Division on 1 January 1926, played at Bramall Lane and still one of the heaviest scorelines in top-flight history. The 1927 FA Cup final is the match the club is defined by.
Head-to-head notes
All-time head-to-head records against 2026/27 Championship opponents could not be established; 11v11, which publishes them, refused automated access, and Cardiff's own site does not carry them in a fetchable form. Recent meetings that can be sourced are limited, because Cardiff spent last season a division below most of this season's opponents. From 2025/26 League One: a 1-1 draw away at Stockport County on 13 September 2025 and a 1-3 home defeat by Bradford City on 20 September 2025, though neither of those clubs is in the Championship this season. Cardiff and Wrexham, the opening opponents, did not meet in 2025/26 and no published all-time record between them was obtained. Two matches against Huddersfield Town were postponed. The one useful repeat is the League Cup first round: Cardiff drew Swindon Town at home in the first round in 2025 and won 2-1, and have drawn Swindon at home in the first round again in 2026.
Right now (2026/27)
Brian Barry-Murphy is head coach, appointed on 16 June 2025 on a three-year contract to the summer of 2028, having been a first-team coach at Leicester City. He is the manager who took Cardiff back up at the first attempt.
The summer has been quiet in both directions. Two players have come in: goalkeeper Nathan Trott from FC Copenhagen on 15 June 2026 for £1.5m, and centre-back Thierry Katsukunya from Aston Villa on a free transfer on 2 July 2026. Ryan Wintle left for Milton Keynes Dons on 13 July 2026. A long list of contracts was not renewed, including Jack Kingdon, Leeyon Phelan, Oliver Reynolds, Will Spiers, Michael Reindorf, Luke Pearce, Josh Beecher, Jacob Hobson, Sam Jones, Oliver Walsh, Harry Watts and Morgan Wigley, most of them academy or fringe players.
Pre-season began badly and improved: a 6-0 home defeat by FC Midtjylland on 11 July 2026, then a 6-1 win at Cork City on 14 July and a 5-1 win at Forest Green Rovers on 25 July, with AS Roma due at the Cardiff City Stadium on 1 August. The EFL Cup first round is at home to Swindon Town on 8 August 2026. The Championship season opens at home to Wrexham on 17 August 2026, followed by Derby County away on 22 August, Sheffield United at home on 29 August and Queens Park Rangers away on 2 September.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff_City_F.C. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Cardiff_City_F.C._records_and_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Cardiff_City_F.C._seasons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025%E2%80%9326_Cardiff_City_F.C._season https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026%E2%80%9327_Cardiff_City_F.C._season https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026%E2%80%9327_EFL_Championship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026%E2%80%9327_EFL_Cup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025%E2%80%9326_EFL_Cup https://www.cardiffcityfc.co.uk/news/brian-barry-murphy-appointed-first-team-head-coach https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/soccer/2025/06/16/cardiff-appoint-brian-barry-murphy-as-new-head-coach-on-three-year-deal/
Researched and written for not4quarters. Where a fact could not be established from the sources read, this page says so rather than guessing.