Whenever a major tournament comes around, many England fans suddenly realise that buying official tickets isn’t as easy as they might hope. The truth is that the time to start planning for official England tournament tickets is at the start of the qualification cycle, up to two years before the event. Read on, and we’ll explain it all in our guide to England Membership.
England Membership Tiers
There are two main England Membership packages to choose from, depending on how committed you are to the England cause.
My England Football Membership
This is a free subscription that took over from the old England Supporters Club and the Lionesses Supporters Club. Previous members of these schemes were automatically enrolled into My England Football. Here’s what you get with this membership tier:
- A priority window to purchase England home tickets before they go on general sale
- The opportunity for kids to walk out with the player as a mascot
- The chance to take part in one-of-a-kind experiences, from meeting the players to training at the St. George’s Park National Football Centre
- A wide range of giveaways, with signed shirts, balls and more
- The ability for amateur footballers to earn Nike rewards
England Supporters Travel Club (ESTC) Membership
This paid England Membership costs £85 (£65 for renewals), and comes with a lineup of benefits, mainly for away tickets but also for home games. There’s also a Junior tier, which costs £35 (£20 for renewals).
Now, you don’t pay per season, but for a two-year period that covers the tournament cycle, from qualification through the finals. Price-wise this was an increase of £10 from the previous cycle. However, post-Covid, the current membership does give you access to more games than the previous one.
So let’s look at the main perks of England Supporters Travel Club Membership:
- A welcome pack with a membership card and gifts including a pin badge and scarf
- Exclusive access to England away tickets
- Exclusive access to England tournament tickets
- Exclusive access to discounted England home match tickets
- Exclusive access to “Home End” England tickets
- Opportunities to win ticket upgrades at Wembley
- Chances to attend open training sessions
- Opportunities to meet the players
- Access to international travel packages during tournaments
- Signed England gear giveaways
- Chances for kids to be mascots
- 10% discount at the official store
- Ability to attend other membership events and forums
For many people, the big advantage of ESTC Membership is the opportunity to attend unforgettable tournament matches, and without paying for the poshest seats. We’ll go into more detail on this later in the article.
How to Buy Home Tickets with My England Football Membership
For England matches at Wembley or other domestic grounds, the process for buying official tickets is relatively straightforward with basic membership. These tickets are sold in a first come, first served system.
With the free My England Football Membership you can jump the queue and get early access to these fixtures via Sale Window 2, before tickets go on general sale. This special priority window applies to both men’s and women’s home fixtures.
To do this you’ll need to opt in to marketing emails from the England Football website, and then you’ll be notified as soon as this priority window opens. This is normally 3-4 months before a given fixture, although the date can vary.
Buying Home Tickets with England Supporters Travel Club Membership
England Supporters Travel Club Members have access to an earlier priority window (Sale Window 1) for home tickets, about a week before the window for people with My England Football Membership.
ESTC Members receive a £5 discount if they make a purchase in this window. They are also allowed to purchase up to eight tickets per membership at this stage.
The England Supporters Travel Club has a part of Wembley reserved for them, dubbed the “Home End”, which we mentioned above. This is in the east end of the stadium, from blocks 109 to 114 in the lower tier. For more info about this location, check out our guide to the Wembley Stadium seating plan.
ESTC Members can also purchase discounted tickets (for £25) in this part of the stadium for every home game in the cycle.
How to Buy Away Tickets with England Supporters Travel Club Membership
For every away qualifier or friendly there’s an early registration period. During this phase, England Travel Club Members are able to register their interest for a ticket. At the end of the registration period they’ll find out if they have been allocated a ticket, and will be able to make a purchase. It’s as simple as that.
The typical process is that 70% of the allocation is offered to the top 70% of ESTC Members who have registered. The remaining 30% is offered to all other ESTC Members.
The number of Caps required to make the top 70% depends on things like allocation size and the number of members who have registered.
How Do England Supporters Travel Club Caps Work?
For every England match you attend, be it a friendly or qualifier, you will be awarded two Caps. If you’re a regular at England games, these Caps accumulate throughout the course of a qualifying cycle, and roll over from the previous one.
However, if you’re a long-term fan, only Caps from the previous qualification cycle count, and the ones from the campaign before the last one are wiped from your total at the start of a new cycle.
This is important, because Caps make a huge difference to your ability to buy the most coveted and cheapest tournament tickets. We can’t state this enough: Every Cap counts, and at the start of a tournament cycle there’s no telling how many you will need in order to qualify for tickets.
How to Buy Tournament Tickets with England Supporters Travel Club Membership
The big story is that you need to be engaged with the England football team long before the sales windows for tournament matches come up. This is because ESTC Caps come into play. We explained Caps in more detail in the above section. Let’s look at how you buy England tickets for tournaments with ESTC Membership.
How Do International Seat Categories Work?
Part of the benefit of ESTC Membership and the Caps system is earning the opportunity to purchase cheaper seats at international tournaments. There’s a standard system for FIFA and UEFA matches, and this is how it looked at Euro 2024:
Fans First - The cheapest seats, behind the goals in the shortside lower tier
Category 3 - High behind the goals
Category 2 - In the corners of the stadium
Category 1 - Longside stands
Prime - Right on the halfway line in the longside stands
The price rises dramatically from category to category, so earning ESTC Caps is a good way to keep your spending down if you want to follow the Three Lions at a major tournament.
Euro 2024 Group Stage Tickets
For Euro 2024, members were invited to register their interest for tickets for Group Stage and Knockout games in October 2023, two months before Second Phase (team-specific) tickets went on sale following the group stage draw in December 2023. They could also specify the category of the seat they wanted. This was a pretty complex process, which we’ll try to simplify here:
This was the breakdown for England Supporters Travel Club Members:
- 70% of the allocation was to fans with the most Caps, prioritised in order of their total
- 20% of tickets were sold in a ballot to anyone unsuccessful in the 70% phase, limited to fans who had attended four home games and two away games over the previous two qualification cycles
- 10% of the allocation was sold in a ballot to all remaining members who had missed out in the 70% and 20% phases
For this tournament, fans with 17 Caps or more qualified for the top 70%. Meanwhile, super-committed England fans with 31 Caps or more were guaranteed a Fans First ticket for any Group Stage match for which they registered interest.
Buying England Tickets for World Cup 2026
Should England qualify for the World Cup in the USA and Mexico in 2026, the ticketing system for England fans will likely follow the same rules as previous tournaments. So that will be the 70%/20%/10% split, as outlined above.
At Qatar there was quite a low level of demand—in fact, a couple of matches were undersubscribed, and almost all ticket applications were successful.
Despite the distances involved, we’re certain that will change for USA/Mexico 2026. So you can expect the quantity of Caps needed to qualify for the right to buy more affordable ticket categories to be higher.
Buying England Euro 2024 Knockout Tickets
England scraped through to the Round of 16, where they drew Slovakia. England’s additional allocation went on sale as soon as the fixture was announced on 26 June. Knockout tournament sales are a little different, as the sale takes place just a day or two before each game.
However, at Euro 2024 the same basic process in place when fans registered their interest for these matches in October 2023 remained.
So against Slovakia, the top 70% (people with 17+ caps as of October 2023) got priority. If you were part of this group, you got access to the following sales windows, by order of how many Caps you picked up before October 2023:
Window 1: 7 AM - 10.30 AM (guaranteed any category seat)
Window 2: 11 AM - 1.30 PM (guaranteed Category 3 seat)
Window 3: 2 PM - 4.30 PM (guaranteed Category 2 seat)
So if you were a high-scoring England Supporters Travel Club Member who registered interest in October 2023, it paid to be quick when those tickets go on sale during the knockouts. You were able to snap up those cheaper Fans First Tickets, insead of having to shell out for a more expensive seat.
For knockouts the 20% and 10% ballots were combined into one 30% group that could buy any remaining tickets on a first come, first served basis at the end of the sales window (5:30 PM - 7:30 PM).
After that, anything left was sold to all other ESTC Members, but there were no guarantees about availability or success.
Now, these deadlines are always extremely tight, so the FA even advises ESTC fans to have a family member ready to log in on their behalf if they’re unable to get to a computer or smartphone during the sales windows.
Will an England Membership Guarantee Me a Ticket?
Neither My England Football Membership nor ESTC Membership will guarantee you a ticket. You have a better chance with ESTC Membership, but there are still criteria that you have to meet for the over-subscribed tournament games.
Is there a Waiting List to Become an England Member?
No, there’s no waiting list for any England Membership. However, if you want to make the most of the rewards available, it’s important to subscribe at the very start of a cycle. This is at the very beginning of the qualification phase, which usually coincides with the beginning of the domestic season following the previous tournament’s finals. If you’re in it for ESTC Caps, joining early is the only way to ensure you have enough for tournament ballots.
Can the Cost of My England Membership Increase?
Yes, but not within a two-year tournament cycle. The price of the ESTC Membership has risen in recent years. But as we mentioned above, there is a discount for renewals compared to new memberships.
As it happens, the price was frozen for more than a decade before the recent sudden hike for the 2026 World Cup cycle. The FA aims to keep pricing as fair as possible for the most loyal England fans, as you can see here:.
| Cycle | New Adult | Adult Renewal | Junior | Junior Renewal |
| 2024-26 | £85 | £65 | £35 | £20 |
| 2022-24 | £75 | £55 | £30 | £15 |
The ESTC Membership fee works out at good value, but only if you’re highly dedicated and follow England at most games.
How Many England Members are there?
There’s no definitive answer to this question, but ESTC Members can login and see where they rank in terms of Caps. You can count the total of ESTC Members with Caps, and this can be as high as 20,000. It illustrates how dedicated you need to be to climb the ranking to make the 70% for tournament tickets.
Club Wem2bley Seasonal Memberships
There are plenty of other ways to be a regular at England’s home games. One is to invest in a hospitality membership with Club Wembley, which makes up the entirety of the Middle Tier at the stadium.
Indeed, Wembley Stadium has the kind of hospitality options that put other national team stadiums to shame. As with seasonal hospitality packages at football clubs, Club Wembley Memberships are sold on a completely different platform to other England Memberships.
Here are a few benefits that all Club Wembley Membership tiers include:
- Early access to the stadium on match days and a longer stay after full-time
- Access to a wealth of dining and drinking establishments in the stadium
- Tickets for every home England men’s match, as well as the FA Cup Final
- A complimentary programme
- Priority access for concerts and NFL games taking place at the stadium
- Complimentary car parking
- 2-4-1 tickets on Wembley tours
- Invitations to exclusive events, including the chance to play on the Wembley pitch
- Complimentary charter trains from London Marylebone and Birmingham
- Access to the Club Wembley ticket resale system
- Hotel discounts
- Premium airport lounge access
Club Wembley Hospitality Packages
Here’s the choice of seasonal packages at Club Wembley, in descending order of luxury:
Inner Circle at Wembley
From £2,640, this basic package can be compared to a premium season ticket at a club side. You get a guaranteed padded seat, as well as all of the benefits outlined above.
Centre Circle at Wembley
From £5,046, the main benefit of these seats is the superb view, from around the halfway line, opposite the dugouts, as the name suggests. You also get unlimited drinks and a street food buffet.
Number Nine at Wembley
From £6,342, Number Nine is a major step up in luxury, with an opulent, VIP lounge. You get a high-class culinary experience, and the stadium seats are right next to the Royal Box.
Bobby Moore Lounge at Wembley
From £9,043, the Bobby Moore Lounge is a high-end tribute to England’s World Cup victory in 1966. You get four-course à la carte dining, paired with unlimited Laurent Perrier Champagne. Accompanying a meal in the lounge is live entertainment by jazz bands.
One Twenty at Wembley
From £13,002, this is the most exclusive club, offering the ultimate in hospitality. You get five-course Michelin-level dining, and will have every whim catered to, with valet parking and unlimited champagne. You also get automatic membership to the Home House private members club in Marylebone, London.
Private Box at Wembley
A whole other level (if you have to ask, you can’t afford it), Private Boxes at Wembley come with personal hosts and chefs, a tailored dining menu, parking spaces, and an all-round sense of VIP luxury, from the perfect views of the pitch to the sleek interiors.
Can I Get Access to Club Wembley with an England Membership?
No, unfortunately an England Membership doesn’t help you snag tickets to Wembley’s posh seats.
Buying Tickets without an England Membership
When it comes to buying tickets for England home matches at Wembley, we’ve shown that ESTC Members get first dibs. After that there’s a window for people with My England Football Membership. If after these two windows there are still tickets available, then tickets will go on general sale.
Bear in mind that this will only happen for the least appealing friendlies and qualifiers. As the quality of the England side has improved since 2016, Wembley tends to sell out for every England game.
Take the England vs Brazil friendly in March 2024. Every general admission ticket sold out within eight hours. As a rule, if you want primary market tickets to the most glamorous England matches at Wembley, you need to have an England Membership.
Buying England Tickets on the Secondary Market
Now, we can’t all be ready to follow England home and away for two whole years, all for the opportunity to buy England tickets for a major tournament.
While we salute that level of dedication, there are many more fans who could never commit to the lifestyle of following England around Europe. Some low-stakes England friendlies and qualifiers can be less than thrilling, so the idea of needing to attend them all to earn Caps might not be for everyone.
For those who want to watch England on the biggest occasions, the secondary market may be the best bet. Ticket Compare curates a number of well-regarded, independently reviewed resale sites, finding you the cheapest seats available on each one.
This saves a lot of time and hassle, but also gives you peace of mind, knowing you’ll be buying authentic tickets. Learn more about buying football resale tickets in our article.
