Goodison Park

Goodison Park – what is actually played here now

First things first, because your trip depends on it: Everton's men's team no longer play here. The last competitive match was on 18 May 2025 against Southampton, won 2-0. Everton now host their Premier League fixtures at the new Hill Dickinson Stadium on Bramley-Moore Dock.

Goodison Park has not been mothballed, though. Since the 2025/26 season it has been the home of Everton Women — one of very few women's sides anywhere playing permanently in a historic ground of this size. If you are looking for a ticket at Goodison Park, you are looking for a women's fixture.

1892 — one of the oldest football grounds in the world

Goodison Park opened in 1892 and was the first major purpose-built football ground in England. Around 39,400 seats, four separate stands, no running track, and tiers as close to the pitch as nobody builds any more.

Much of it carries the signature of Archibald Leitch, the architect who shaped the British stadium of the early twentieth century — his distinctive criss-cross balcony trusses survive here in the original.

The four stands, and the church in the corner

The tiers are the Goodison Road Stand, the Bullens Road Stand, the Sir Philip Carter Park Stand and the Howard Kendall Gwladys Street End — the last of these the traditional home end.

The best-known quirk stands at the north-west corner: St Luke the Evangelist, a nineteenth-century parish church built literally into the corner of the ground. The stadium was constructed around it because it would not move.

What happened here

In 1913 King George V attended a match at Goodison — the first British monarch ever to watch a football game. In 1966 the ground staged a World Cup semi-final. And for decades it was one half of the Merseyside derby: Anfield lies under a mile and a half away, separated only by Stanley Park — ten to fifteen minutes on foot.

Getting there

Goodison Park stands on Goodison Road in Walton, around three kilometres north of Liverpool city centre. Buses take roughly 20 minutes from the centre; the nearest stations are Kirkdale and Sandhills, each about a 20-minute walk away.

If you are in Liverpool anyway: Anfield is within walking distance, and both grounds can be seen in a single afternoon — match or no match.