Leicester City
Also written as Leicester.
The club
Leicester City were founded in 1884 as Leicester Fosse and took their present name in 1919, when Leicester was granted city status. They play at the King Power Stadium, opened in 2002 as the Walkers Stadium and officially opened by Gary Lineker on 23 July 2002, with a capacity of 32,259 across the North, East, South (Spion Kop) and West stands. Their previous home, Filbert Street, stood less than 300 yards away and was used from 1891 to 2002. Approval to expand the King Power to 40,000 was given provisionally in September 2022 and formally in December 2023. The club play in royal blue and are known as the Foxes.
Recent seasons
Leicester finished fifth in the Premier League in 2020/21 and won the FA Cup that season, then eighth in 2021/22. They were relegated in 2022/23, ending a nine-year stay in the top flight. They came straight back as Championship champions in 2023/24 with 97 points, finishing above Ipswich Town on 96 and Leeds United on 90.
The return lasted one season. Leicester were relegated again in 2024/25, finishing 20th and going down with five matches still to play. Then came the worst season in the club's modern history. In 2025/26 they finished 23rd in the Championship with 46 points from 46 games, 12 wins, 16 draws and 18 defeats. They had been docked six points on 5 February 2026 for a breach of profitability and sustainability rules and lost their appeal on 8 April 2026; without the deduction they would have had 52, which would still have relegated them. Leicester therefore begin 2026/27 in League One, alongside Oxford United and Sheffield Wednesday, who went down with them. Coventry City won that Championship with 95 points, Ipswich Town were second on 84 and Hull City came up through the play-offs, beating Middlesbrough 1-0 at Wembley on 23 May 2026.
Honours and landmarks
Premier League champions 2015/16, at odds of 5000-1, the club's only league title. FA Cup winners 2021, their only FA Cup. League Cup winners 1964, 1997 and 2000. FA Community Shield 1971 and 2021. Championship champions 2023/24.
The 2015/16 title took Leicester into the Champions League for the first time in 2016/17, where they reached the quarter-finals. They reached the semi-finals of the UEFA Europa Conference League in 2021/22.
The record league attendance at the King Power Stadium is 32,242 against Sunderland on 8 August 2015. The club's all-time record attendance, set at Filbert Street, could not be established from the sources read. Record transfer fees paid and received are not published in the sources read; the largest fee in the 2026 summer window was £20m received from Ipswich Town for Abdul Fatawu.
Notable scorelines
Record victory: 9-0 away at Southampton on 25 October 2019, still the biggest away win in Premier League history. Record defeat: 0-12 against Nottingham Forest in 1908/09, which remains a Football League record. The match the club is best known for is not a scoreline but a sequence: the 2015/16 title, clinched without playing when Tottenham Hotspur drew at Chelsea on 2 May 2016.
Head-to-head notes
Leicester do not publish all-time head-to-head records on their website, and no published all-time record could be established for any of their 2026/27 League One opponents. This is a squad and a division with almost no shared recent history: Leicester have not played in the third tier in the modern era and most of the League One field are unfamiliar opposition.
Two contacts can be dated. Leicester beat Northampton Town 3-0 in a pre-season friendly in July 2026 and were then drawn at home to the same club in the EFL Cup first round, so they meet twice inside a month. And they finished above Oxford United in 2025/26 only on the technicality of Oxford's 47 points to Leicester's 46 after the deduction; the two now meet in League One.
Right now (2026/27)
Russell Martin was appointed manager on 15 June 2026 on a three-year contract, taking over a club that had just been relegated for the second season running under a points deduction.
The summer was a forced sale. Bilal El Khannouss left for VfB Stuttgart on 1 July for £15.3m, Jeremy Monga joined Manchester City on 11 July for £10m, Abdul Fatawu went to Ipswich Town on 21 July for £20m, and Harry Winks joined Cagliari on 15 July for an undisclosed fee. Six players left at the end of their contracts on 30 June: Patson Daka, who joined Hamburger SV, plus Jordan Ayew, Asmir Begovic, Jamaal Lascelles, Wanya Marcal and Ricardo Pereira. The incoming business was correspondingly modest: Conor Chaplin from Ipswich Town and goalkeeper Alex McCarthy from Southampton, both free transfers on 16 July, and forward Liam Cullen from Swansea City for an undisclosed fee on 31 July.
Pre-season went well: 3-0 against Northampton Town, 2-1 at Bristol Rovers, 3-0 at Burton Albion, 1-0 at Cadiz and 3-3 at Malaga.
Leicester host Northampton Town in the EFL Cup first round at the King Power Stadium on Saturday 8 August 2026 at 3pm. The League One season starts the weekend of 14 to 16 August, and Leicester's first league fixture is away to Notts County at Meadow Lane on 15 August 2026.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leicester_City_F.C. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Power_Stadium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026%E2%80%9327_Leicester_City_F.C._season https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025%E2%80%9326_EFL_Championship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023%E2%80%9324_EFL_Championship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026%E2%80%9327_EFL_League_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026%E2%80%9327_EFL_Cup
Researched and written for not4quarters. Where a fact could not be established from the sources read, this page says so rather than guessing.