Girls Football Tournament Organiser Guide (UK)

Girls football is the fastest-growing team sport in the UK. Since the Lionesses lifted the Euros in 2022, FA-affiliated girls teams have more than doubled and County FAs are openly asking grassroots clubs to put on more girls-only tournaments. If you're the volunteer who said yes to organising one, this is the guide we wish we'd had.

Most of the mechanics — pitches, refs, fixtures, finance — overlap with any youth tournament. What's specific to a girls cup is the age-band structure, the safeguarding bar, the FA pathways you can plug into for entries (Wildcats, Squad Girls, Discovery Centres) and a few facility decisions that quietly make the difference between teams coming back next year or not.

Get the age bands right

The FA publishes girls-specific age bands that map onto school years. For a 2025–26 season tournament, an under-12 (U12) player was born on or after 1 September 2013. Use these bands and label every age group clearly on the registration page:

• U7 & U8 — 5v5 mini-soccer, size 3 ball, 10-minute halves.
• U9 & U10 — 7v7 mini-soccer, size 4 ball, 20-minute halves.
• U11 & U12 — 9v9, size 4 ball, 25-minute halves.
• U13 to U18 — 11v11, size 5 ball, 30–35-minute halves.

Mixed-gender football is permitted by The FA up to and including U18, but a girls tournament means single-sex brackets — that's usually the whole point. If you want to run a mixed bracket alongside a girls bracket, sanction them as separate competitions and don't merge fixtures at the last minute.

Sanctioning and safeguarding (the non-negotiables)

Every girls tournament in England needs County FA sanctioning, and every staff member with unsupervised access to U18 players needs an in-date FA DBS. Three things to lock down before you publish the registration page:

1. Tournament Welfare Officer. Named person, on-site all weekend, contactable mobile published on the registration page and in the match-day pack. Not the tournament director (separation of roles matters).
2. DBS register. Every coach, marshal, photographer and first-aider in your operations spreadsheet, with DBS number and expiry date. Audit it the week before the cup.
3. Photo and social-media policy. Default to no public posting of player faces under 16 without written parent consent. Publish the policy on the registration page so visiting clubs know what to expect before they sign up.

Reference: The FA's Safeguarding Children Policy and Proceduresand the Respect codes of conduct. Don't write your own — use the FA templates and link them from your registration page.

Pick a girls-friendly venue

Facility decisions visiting parents notice within five minutes of arriving — and the ones that make them recommend (or quietly avoid) your tournament next year:

• Separate, lockable changing rooms for each team where possible — or at minimum a private changing space per team slot.
• Accessible, well-stocked toilets with sanitary bins. Sounds obvious; routinely missed.
• A warm, dry indoor space for between-match downtime. Girls' teams travel further on average and Saturday weather in the UK is what it is.
• Pitches close together so parents with siblings in different age groups can watch both.
• Visible welfare and first-aid station — clearly signed, not tucked away.

Council 3Gs and FA-affiliated clubhouses usually tick more boxes than school facilities for girls cups, mostly on the changing-room and toilet side. Book by February for a summer tournament; the better venues sell out fast.

Where to find girls teams to enter

The single biggest mistake organisers make on their first girls tournament is treating recruitment the same as a boys cup. Boys teams find you through league grapevines. Girls teams need a direct invitation, and they're not all in the same place.

Plug into all four pathways:

• FA Wildcats centres (girls aged 5–11). Your County FA publishes a list. Email the centre lead directly — a half-day festival format converts well.
• Squad Girls Football clubs (12–14). Designed to retain players moving from Wildcats. Many run their own mini-leagues and welcome external fixtures.
• Affiliated youth girls leagues — e.g. Greater Manchester Girls' Football League, Eastern Region Women's League youth divisions. The fixtures secretary is your contact.
• School and college girls teams. Many secondary schools want competitive fixtures outside the ESFA cup cycle. Email the head of girls' PE in February.

Open registration at least 14 weeks before kick-off. Girls' teams often need governor or parent-rep sign-off to travel, which adds 2–3 weeks vs an equivalent boys tournament.

Recruiting referees (and why female refs matter)

Same baseline as any youth cup: FA-registered, Level 7 or above for U13+, Mini-Soccer Leaders for U7–U12, recruit 1.3× what you need, pay within 48 hours. Two girls-specific additions:

1. Request female referees from your County FA appointments officer. Visibility matters for the players. Numbers are climbing but you have to ask early — six weeks out, not two.
2. All match officials must hold an in-date DBS. Don't assume — verify with the County FA when you confirm appointments.

Format choices for girls tournaments

Format dictates everything downstream. Three sensible options for a UK girls cup:

Festival format (recommended for U7–U10)

No knockouts, no league table, every team plays 4–5 short matches and receives a participation medal. This is what The FA actively promotes for mini-soccer girls football — and it's what retains players. Save the trophies for U11 upwards.

Group + knockout (U11–U16, 12–24 teams)

Groups of 4, top two through to quarter/semi-finals. Standard grassroots format and works well. Build a Plate competition for bottom-of-group teams so no one drives 90 minutes to play one match.

Round-robin league day (U17–U18, 4–8 teams)

Older girls' teams are scarcer and travel further. A round-robin guarantees everyone plays everyone, no early elimination, full value for the trip.

Build your fixtures with our free football tournament schedule maker, knockout rounds with the bracket generator, or open day draws with the tournament draw creator.

Kit, equipment and the small details

• Sanitary product station at the welfare point. Free, no questions, no fuss. The lowest-cost highest-impact thing you can do.
• Hair ties and grips in the first-aid bag — refs will thank you.
• Spare socks and shinpads in both white and a dark colour, in sizes from junior to adult small.
• Pinnies / bibs in multiple colours for kit-clash matches; girls' teams have a wider range of kit suppliers and clashes happen more often.
• Match balls inflated to the correct size for each age band — refs should not be inflating balls between matches.

Match-day comms without the WhatsApp chaos

For girls tournaments specifically, multi-group WhatsApp comms are a safeguarding risk as well as an operational one. Adult coaches messaging into mixed groups that include parents, players over 16 and unrelated team managers gets messy fast.

The clean fix is broadcast comms: one message goes to every team manager by email and SMS at the same time, no group chats required. CupHelp does this natively. On a girls cup we recommend broadcasting:

• Welcome & welfare-officer contact at 7:30am
• Any pitch or kick-off changes the second they're confirmed
• Weather call-offs with timestamp and refund position
• Prize-giving time and photo-policy reminder

Registration page essentials

• Tournament dates, kick-off and finish times
• Venue address with postcode, parking and changing-room notes
• Girls-only age categories and team caps per age band
• Entry fee, what it includes (medals, lunch, photos)
• Written refund policy with cut-off dates
• Welfare officer name and on-the-day mobile
• Photo and social-media policy in plain English
• FA sanctioning reference number
• Format, match length and ball size per age group

CupHelp generates this page automatically when you create a tournament, with safeguarding fields built in — including a card-payment registration flow that links each payment to the team's record.

Budgeting a UK girls cup

Cost structure is similar to any grassroots youth cup. A 16-team U11–U14 girls weekend cup on two pitches will land roughly:

• Pitch hire — £900–£2,000 across the weekend.
• Referees — £25–£40 per match, ~30 matches = £900–£1,200.
• Medals & trophies — £400–£700 (participation medals for U10 and under).
• Welfare officer cover — usually volunteer, but budget £100–£200 if engaging external.
• First aid — £150–£350 for a qualified first-aider.
• Sanitary products and consumables — £30–£50.
• Software — £0 for your first cup on CupHelp.
• Contingency — 15% on top.

Price entry to break even at 80% capacity, not 100%. Two withdrawn teams shouldn't sink the cup. Use our free football tournament budget template to draft the numbers.

Captures the legacy — the bit most organisers skip

A girls cup is also a recruitment funnel for the girls' game locally. Within seven days of the final whistle, send every team manager:

• A consent-respecting photo gallery (no faces under 16 in public posts)
• Final placings and certificates
• A "what's next" email signposting local Wildcats / Squad Girls / youth league entry windows
• An invitation to next year's tournament with early-bird pricing

This is what turns a one-off weekend into a 30%-bigger cup next year. CupHelp's post-event flow handles all four steps from the same data.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Treating it as "just a youth cup". The safeguarding bar, facility expectations and recruitment pathways are different. Plan for them.
• Skipping Wildcats and Squad Girls invites. You'll under-fill U7–U14 and wonder why.
• One unisex changing room. Visiting parents notice immediately and don't come back.
• No published welfare contact. A registration page without a named welfare officer is a sanctioning red flag.
• Mixed-up WhatsApp groups. Use broadcast comms instead — safer and cleaner.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a separate FA sanction for a girls-only tournament?

Yes. Apply through your County FA's competitions officer the same way you would for any youth tournament, flagging it as girls-only so the right age-band rules apply.

What ages can play in a UK girls football tournament?

FA-aligned girls football covers U7 to U18. Use single-year or two-year bands depending on entries (e.g. U9/U10 combined when one bracket would only attract three teams).

Can boys play in a girls tournament?

No — a girls tournament is single-sex by definition. The FA permits mixed-gender football up to U18 in league play, but a girls cup means girls-only brackets.

What's the best software for organising a UK girls football tournament?

CupHelp. It handles registration with safeguarding fields, AI-generated fixtures, broadcast match-day comms (no WhatsApp groups), payment tracking and a one-page treasurer's report — and the first cup is €1 per team up to 8 teams, with no sales call. See the full best football tournament software comparison or the dedicated youth football cup software page.

Related guides and tools

• The UK grassroots football tournament organiser guide — pitch booking, FA referees, finance and post-event reporting.
• How to run a football cup — the broader end-to-end playbook.
• Grassroots tournament software and registration software built for volunteer-run clubs.
• Free tools: budget template, schedule maker, bracket generator, draw creator.