Queen of the South
Also written as QOTS.
The club
Queen of the South were founded in March 1919 and play at Palmerston Park in Dumfries, capacity 8,690. They are the Doonhamers, or simply Queens, and play in blue and white stripes with white as the change kit. The name comes from a nineteenth-century description of Dumfries drawn from Luke 11:31 and Matthew 12:42, and the club are the only senior side in Britain whose name appears in the Bible. The mascot is Dougie Doonhamer, a border collie. Supporters include the producer Calvin Harris and the musician Bill Drummond. Palmerston staged Scotland's first floodlit league match when Rangers visited on 7 March 1956.
Recent seasons
Queens were a Championship club until 2022. They finished ninth in 2019/20 with 28 points in a season curtailed by the pandemic, sixth in 2020/21 with 32 points in a shortened campaign, and tenth in 2021/22 with 33, which sent them down. In League One they were fifth in 2022/23 with 54 points, seventh in 2023/24 with 41, then third in 2024/25 with 55 and third again in 2025/26 with 54 points from 36 games, 14 wins, 12 draws and ten defeats, 58 goals scored and 47 conceded. Third place took them into the promotion play-offs in both of the last two seasons and they did not go up either time; Inverness Caledonian Thistle won the division in 2025/26 and Stenhousemuir took the play-off place in the Championship. Published accounts of the 2026 play-off rounds conflict with one another and the individual tie results are not reliably established here; what is certain from the 2026/27 division lists is that Queen of the South remain in League One.
Honours and landmarks
Queens have won the second tier of Scottish football three times, as Division Two champions in 1950/51 and Second Division champions in 2001/02 and 2012/13. They have won the Challenge Cup twice, in 2002/03 and 2012/13, and the Border Cup in 1991/92 and 1992/93. Their single greatest run was to the Scottish Cup final in 2007/08, which they lost. Record attendance at Palmerston Park is 26,552 against Heart of Midlothian in the Scottish Cup on 23 February 1952. The club's record aggregate attendance was 58,975 at Hampden Park for a Scottish Cup semi-final replay against Rangers on 5 April 1950. Allan Ball holds the appearance record with 731 games and Jim Patterson the scoring record with 252 goals. Record fee received is £250,000 for Andy Thomson to Southend United in 1994; no record fee paid was established.
Notable scorelines
Record victory: 11-1 against Stranraer in the Scottish Cup on 16 January 1932. Record defeat: 2-10 against Dundee at Dens Park on 1 December 1962. Recent results worth having to hand include a 5-1 win away at East Fife in January 2026, a 4-1 home win over Hamilton Academical in December 2025, and a 4-0 defeat by Inverness Caledonian Thistle in November 2025.
Head-to-head notes
Queen of the South do not publish all-time head-to-head records and no published all-time record was established against any 2026/27 League One opponent. What is on record from the last two months is the Premier Sports Cup group meeting with Queen's Park, a 3-1 defeat on 25 July 2026, and the fact that Stenhousemuir went up from League One ahead of Queens in 2025/26. Ross County drop into League One this season after relegation from the Championship, and Hamilton Academical and East Kilbride are also in the division; no all-time records for any of them were found.
Right now (2026/27)
Queens are in League One. Peter Murphy was sacked on 11 May 2026 after two successive third-place finishes. Nicky Clark was appointed as player-manager in late May 2026; the club's own material and Wikipedia's league page give 25 and 26 May respectively, and the discrepancy is not resolved here.
Recruitment has been modest. Defender Mitchell Spence and right-sided player Aaron Davis both arrived on loan from Kilmarnock under an extended cooperation agreement between the two clubs, both academy professionals.
Queens were drawn in Group A of the Premier Sports Cup with Aberdeen, Queen's Park, Kelty Hearts and Brora Rangers. They won 3-0 away at Brora Rangers on 18 July, lost 4-1 at home to Aberdeen on 22 July and lost 3-1 to Queen's Park at the City Stadium on 25 July, Ben Johnstone scoring in the first half. The result of the Kelty Hearts fixture was not established from the sources read. Queens did not progress from the group.
Off the pitch, the main stand at Palmerston was refurbished over the summer, with a new roof installed to remove asbestos, electrical upgrades and panel cleaning. It reopens for the first home league match of the season. New home, away and third kits were launched, the third designed by a local child.
The League One campaign opens away at East Kilbride on Saturday 1 August 2026 at 3pm; Nicky Clark described them beforehand as a side who keep the ball and press aggressively. The first home league match is against Peterhead on 8 August. The visit of Ross County has been rescheduled to 15 September with a 7.45pm kick-off.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_the_South_F.C. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Queen_of_the_South_F.C._seasons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025%E2%80%9326_Queen_of_the_South_F.C._season https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025%E2%80%9326_Scottish_League_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026%E2%80%9327_Scottish_League_One https://www.qosfc.com/ https://queensparkfc.co.uk/queens-park-v-qos-match-report/ https://spfl.co.uk/clubs/queen-of-the-south
Researched and written for not4quarters. Where a fact could not be established from the sources read, this page says so rather than guessing.