There is a moment, about halfway up the steps to the Kop, where you hear it before you see it. The noise hits you first — a low, pressurised hum that builds as you climb. Then you clear the top of the stairwell and the whole thing opens up: the pitch, the stands, the red, and 61,000 people who have been waiting all week for this. If you’ve been there, you know exactly what that feels like. If you haven’t, there’s a problem — and it’s one that gets harder to solve every year.
The season ticket waiting list at Anfield has been closed for years. When it was last open, the average wait was 30 years. That is not a typo. Thirty years. Liverpool have over 200 million followers globally. Anfield holds 61,276. The maths are brutal, and they are not changing. Getting into Anfield is not a matter of deciding you want to go. It requires planning, knowledge, and — now more than ever — acting when the opportunity is there.
But the opportunity does exist. Liverpool tickets for the 2025-26 season are available — and given what is happening at Anfield right now, this is not the season to wait. Match tickets are available here if you want to skip straight to securing your place. For everyone else, here is the full picture.
Anfield: Built on a Rent Dispute, Defined by Everything That Followed
Origins: This Was Everton’s Ground First (1884–1892)
Most people don’t know this, but Anfield was built for Everton. The Blues played here from 1884 to 1892, until a rent dispute with the ground’s owner, John Houlding, ended the arrangement. Everton refused to pay the increased rent, packed up, and moved across Stanley Park to Goodison Park. Houlding, left with a ground and no club to fill it, founded Liverpool FC in 1892 specifically to play at Anfield. The first match was a pre-season friendly against Rotherham Town on 1 September 1892, won 7-1. The entire squad was Scottish — they were known as the “Scotch Professors.” Liverpool were admitted to the Football League in 1893, their first season of existence.
The detail matters because it tells you something about this club from the very beginning: Liverpool FC exists because of Anfield, not the other way around. The ground came first. Everything else was built around it.
The Shankly Revolution (1959–1974)
Bill Shankly was appointed on 1 December 1959. He inherited a Second Division club with a crumbling infrastructure and a fanbase that had been waiting years for something to believe in. His first act was to release 24 players. His second was to convert a small room beneath the Main Stand into what became the “Boot Room” — an informal coaching hub where Shankly, Bob Paisley, Joe Fagan, and Reuben Bennett developed the football philosophy that would define Liverpool for the next three decades.
Promotion from the Second Division came in 1962. The First Division title followed in 1963-64. The FA Cup — Liverpool’s first — arrived in 1965 with a 2-1 win over Leeds at Wembley. But Shankly’s most important achievement was turning Anfield into a fortress. Under his management, the Kop — a single-tiered stand holding around 12,000 fans, named after the Battle of Spion Kop from the Boer War in 1900 — became the most famous terrace in world football. Opponents didn’t just come to Anfield to play a match. They came knowing the ground itself was working against them.
Shankly retired on 12 July 1974. His statue stands outside the Main Stand. He died on 29 September 1981. His quote on the relationship between a club and its supporters — “At a football club, there’s a holy trinity — the players, the manager and the supporters. Directors don’t come into it. They are only there to sign the cheques” — still reads as the most precise description of what Liverpool FC is supposed to be.
The Paisley Dynasty: Liverpool Dominate Europe (1974–1983)
Bob Paisley is technically Liverpool’s most decorated manager. In nine seasons, he won six league titles, three European Cups, three League Cups, and one UEFA Cup — 19 trophies in total. No manager in English football history has won more.
The three European Cups tell the story of how completely Liverpool dominated the continent in this period. In 1977, they beat Borussia Mönchengladbach 3-1 in Rome — goals from Terry McDermott, Tommy Smith, and Phil Neal. In 1978, they retained it, beating Club Brugge 1-0 at Wembley with a Kenny Dalglish goal. In 1981, they beat Real Madrid 1-0 in Paris — Alan Kennedy with the winner. Three different opponents. Three different cities. The same result.
Joe Fagan succeeded Paisley and immediately won an unprecedented treble in 1983-84: the League, League Cup, and European Cup — beating Roma on penalties in the same city where Liverpool had won their first European Cup seven years earlier.
Paisley’s statue was unveiled on 30 January 2020 in Paisley Square outside the Main Stand. It depicts him carrying Emlyn Hughes off the pitch after a match against Tottenham in April 1968 — a moment from before he even became manager, but one that captures exactly what he meant to the club.
Heysel and Hillsborough: The Darkest Chapters
On 29 May 1985, 39 people died at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels before the European Cup final between Liverpool and Juventus, when a wall collapsed following crowd disorder. English clubs were banned from European competition for five years; Liverpool for six.
On 15 April 1989, 97 Liverpool supporters lost their lives in a crowd crush at Hillsborough in Sheffield during an FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest. The 97th victim, Andrew Devine, died in July 2021. The Hillsborough Justice Campaign spent 27 years fighting for the truth to be officially acknowledged. A permanent memorial stands outside Anfield. The words “You’ll Never Walk Alone” appear at the top of the Shankly Gates and on the memorial. These are not historical footnotes. They are part of what Anfield is.
Istanbul and the Miracle of 2005
If you need a single moment to explain what Liverpool and Anfield represent, it is the 2005 Champions League final — even though the match itself was played in Istanbul.
By half-time, Liverpool were 3-0 down to AC Milan. Paolo Maldini had scored inside the first minute. Hernán Crespo added two more before the break. Rafael BenÃtez’s team walked into the dressing room needing three goals in 45 minutes against one of the best sides in Europe. What happened next remains the most extraordinary comeback in the history of the competition. Steven Gerrard headed in from close range on 54 minutes. Vladimir Smicer scored from outside the box on 56. Xabi Alonso’s penalty was saved — he scored the rebound on 59. Three goals in six minutes. Three-all. Penalties. Jerzy Dudek, famously wobbling on his line, saved from Pirlo and Shevchenko. Liverpool won 3-2 on penalties.
It was Liverpool’s fifth European Cup. Fifth-time winners get to keep the trophy permanently and wear a multi-winner badge on their shirt. Consistently voted the greatest Champions League final ever played. Every time Anfield roars on a European night, it carries the memory of Istanbul in it.
The Klopp Era (2015–2024)
Jürgen Klopp was appointed on 8 October 2015 after leaving Borussia Dortmund, where he had won back-to-back Bundesliga titles and reached the 2013 Champions League final. What he built at Liverpool over nine years reset the standard for the club entirely.
The 2019 Champions League semi-final second leg against Barcelona remains arguably the greatest single European night Anfield has ever produced. Liverpool had lost the first leg 3-0 at Camp Nou. At Anfield, they won 4-0 — Gini Wijnaldum scoring twice as a substitute, Divock Origi scoring twice including the final goal from a corner that should never have worked. Liverpool went through 4-3 on aggregate. They went on to beat Tottenham 2-0 in the final in Madrid — Salah from the penalty spot in the second minute, Origi at the death.
The 2019-20 Premier League title ended a 30-year wait. The 2022 League Cup and FA Cup were won in the same season — both finals against Chelsea, both going to penalties. The 2024 League Cup final, Klopp’s last trophy, was decided by a Virgil van Dijk header in extra time against Chelsea at Wembley.
Klopp announced his departure on 26 January 2024. His final home game at Anfield on 19 May 2024 — a 2-0 win over Wolves — ended with a farewell on the Kop that few who were there will forget. He left on 31 May 2024, after nearly nine years.
Anfield: What You’re Actually Walking Into
The ground reached its current capacity of 61,276 in March 2025, when the Anfield Road Stand expansion was certified complete. The project cost approximately £80 million and added around 7,000 seats across a new upper tier, expanded hospitality areas, and covered family sections. The Main Stand expansion in 2016 had already added approximately 8,500 seats, taking the capacity from around 45,000 to 54,074. Liverpool CEO Billy Hogan confirmed in 2024 there are no plans for further expansion — the Kop is hemmed in by a road on one side; the Sir Kenny Dalglish Stand faces residential streets.
The four stands are: the Spion Kop (single-tier, approximately 12,000 seats, home end), the Main Stand (three-tier, running the length of the pitch), the Sir Kenny Dalglish Stand (two-tier, opposite the Main Stand), and the Anfield Road End (two-tier, where away supporters are housed).
The record attendance is 61,905 — set against Wolverhampton Wanderers in the FA Cup in 1952. The Premier League record at the ground is 60,420, set against Ipswich Town in the 2024-25 season.
Two details matter more than any stat. The first is the “This Is Anfield” sign, mounted above the tunnel through which players walk onto the pitch. Introduced by Bill Shankly in the 1960s, it was intended to remind visiting players exactly where they were. Liverpool players touch it for luck. Plenty of opponents do now too, though that was not the original intention. The second is the Shankly Gates at the main Anfield Road entrance, unveiled in 1982 in Shankly’s memory, with “You’ll Never Walk Alone” written across the top in wrought iron.
The 2025-26 Season: Why Right Now Matters
Arne Slot won the Premier League in his first season in charge — the 2024-25 title, Liverpool’s 20th, clinched on 27 April 2025 with a 5-1 win over Tottenham Hotspur. He became the first Dutch manager to win the Premier League, and the first manager since Antonio Conte at Chelsea in 2016-17 to win it in their debut season. That result equalled Manchester United’s all-time record of 20 league titles.
The 2025-26 season has been significantly harder, and the atmosphere at Anfield has reflected that — which, counterintuitively, is exactly why it’s worth being there.
The summer was shaped as much by loss as by investment. Trent Alexander-Arnold left for Real Madrid. Diogo Jota, who had been with the club since 2020, died in a car accident on 3 July 2025 near Cernadilla in northern Spain, along with his brother André Silva. Liverpool retired his squad number 20 on 11 July 2025, across all levels of the club.
The transfer response was significant. Alexander Isak arrived from Newcastle United for £125 million on 1 September 2025 — a new British transfer record. Florian Wirtz signed from Bayer Leverkusen for £116 million. Jeremie Frimpong and Hugo Ekitike also joined. Liverpool’s squad is now the most expensively assembled in the club’s history.
The season has not gone to plan. Isak fractured his fibula. Wirtz has dealt with a back injury. Liverpool are pushing for a top-six finish and a Champions League place, but the title defence has stalled. In the Champions League, Liverpool drew at home to Real Madrid, Atlético Madrid, and PSV Eindhoven in the league phase, then were drawn against Galatasaray in the last 16. The second leg is at Anfield.
There are other reasons to go. On 25 August 2025, a 16-year-old named Rio Ngumoha scored a 100th-minute winner against Newcastle United — becoming Liverpool’s youngest ever Premier League goalscorer at 16 years and 361 days. Mohamed Salah is still at the club. Virgil van Dijk is still captaining the side. The bones of what Klopp built are still there. And Slot, for all the difficulties of this campaign, has shown enough to suggest this is a squad being built for another sustained run at the top.
Anfield on a European night — particularly now, with a Champions League last-16 second leg to come — is something that has to be experienced rather than described. The season ticket list is closed. But match tickets are available here for upcoming fixtures. The waiting list for a seat that opens up permanently at Anfield is measured in decades. The wait for a match ticket this season doesn’t have to be.
Why Anfield Is Different
Anfield has hosted six European Cup and Champions League finals’ worth of history, 20 league title celebrations, and moments — Istanbul 2005, Barcelona 2019, the 1977 European Cup homecoming — that have no equivalent in English football. The ground has been continuously used by the same club since 1892. There is not another stadium in England that can say that.
But none of the above is why Anfield is different. The reason is simpler. “You’ll Never Walk Alone” was first sung at Anfield in 1963, after Gerry & the Pacemakers took the Rodgers & Hammerstein song to number one in the UK charts. It predates every trophy Shankly won, every European Cup, every title. When 61,000 people sing it together before kick-off — and they mean it, because generations of families have been coming here long enough that the song runs through them — it is the most powerful thing you will hear at a football ground. Anywhere. It is inscribed on the Shankly Gates, on the Hillsborough Memorial, and in the memory of everyone who has stood in that stadium when it happens.
Liverpool have 200 million supporters and 61,276 seats. If you’ve been waiting for the right moment to finally go — this is it. Get your Liverpool tickets here and be in that stadium when Anfield does what Anfield does.
Liverpool FC Honours
- League / Premier League: 20 titles (joint English record) — including 2019-20 and 2024-25
- UEFA Champions League / European Cup: 6 (English record) — 1977, 1978, 1981, 1984, 2005, 2019
- FA Cup: 8
- League Cup (EFL Cup): 10 (English record)
- UEFA Cup / Europa League: 3 (English record)
- UEFA Super Cup: 4 (English record)
- FIFA Club World Cup: 1 (2019)
- Total major trophies: 52 — more than any other English club
Anfield — Key Facts
- Original tenant: Everton FC (1884–1892)
- Liverpool FC founded: 1892, by John Houlding, specifically to use the ground
- Current capacity: 61,276 — 5th largest in England
- Record attendance: 61,905 — vs Wolverhampton Wanderers, FA Cup, 1952
- Premier League record at Anfield: 60,420 — vs Ipswich Town, 2024-25
- Season ticket waiting list: Closed. Average wait when open: 30 years
- Main Stand expansion: 2016 — added ~8,500 seats
- Anfield Road Stand expansion: 2021–2025 — added ~7,000 seats, cost ~£80m
- Owners: Fenway Sports Group (FSG) since October 2010
- “This Is Anfield” sign: Above the tunnel — introduced by Bill Shankly in the 1960s
- Shankly Gates: Main entrance, unveiled 1982 — “You’ll Never Walk Alone” across the top
