National Football Museum, Manchester
The National Football Museum originally opened in Preston in 2001. Home to a collection of over 140,000 boots, balls, programmes, paintings, postcards and ceramics (including the prestigious FIFA collection), it was situated at Preston North End’s Deepdale ground. While the museum was a critical successful and popular with visitors, external funding was withdrawn and the doors closed to the public in 2010.
Manchester City Council agreed to fund a new National Football Museum to be situated in the Urbis building, designed by Manchester architect Ian Simpson. After investment from the European Regional Development Fund, the National Football Museum opened in Manchester in July 2012. Over the first six weeks of opening the museum welcomed over 100,000 visitors and in just over two years over 1 million had walked through the turnstiles. Visitors from across the globe continue to enjoy world class objects (over 2,500 are on display at any one time), ground breaking interactives and a changing programme of temporary exhibitions, linking football to topics as diverse as fashion, history, art and World War 1.
The museum’s president is Sir Bobby Charlton. Vice Presidents include Sir Alex Ferguson, Sir Trevor Brooking and Sir Geoff Hurst. The museum’s Special Ambassador is Mark Lawrenson.
The National Football Museum is proud to be home to a Designated Collection. Recognised in 2013 by Arts Council England as a collection “of outstanding importance and value, that deepens our understanding of the world”. The National Football Museum was proud to be the youngest organisation to receive this recognition of outstanding quality and importance of our collection.
The National Football Museum Collections
The National Football Museum holds the world’s finest collection of football artefacts and archives. As a growing on-line resource they comprise the World Football Museum.
The collections have been brought together from a rich variety of sources.
