16 April 2025

With the 2025 Schools’ Football Week campaign, in partnership with Pokémon, all over for another year, The English Schools’ FA (ESFA) take a look back at the week that saw over 200,000 pupils from schools across England, take part in schools’ football activity from 31st March – 6th April.

The ESFA and Pokémon would like to thank all the schools who took part in activity during Schools’ Football Week (SFW) 2025 and hope that all pupils involved enjoyed themselves and experienced the many benefits of taking part in schools’ football.

SFW saw schools take part in a range of activities both on the football pitch but also in the classroom. From inter-house football tournaments and festivals to filling out the SFW Pokémon themed worksheets and writing football themed poetry; so much brilliant activity has been shared during the week using #Schoolsfootballweek and tagging @schoolsfootball. Below are some of our favourites:

Trailblazer schools

A new addition for the 2025 Schools’ Football week campaign was the opportunity for schools to become a SFW Trailblazer! With the support of Pokémon, the ESFA selected 250 schools to be Trailblazers, after reviewing the activity they had planned for pupils during the week. These schools were sent additional resources to facilitate their activity including SFW themed T-shirts, Poké ball footballs and Trailblazer certificates. These resources have been put to good use in our Trailblazer schools being used as rewards for engagement in activity, to support sports leaders or to simply allow pupils to get out in the sun and enjoy playing football with their friends. The ESFA and Pokémon would like to thank the 250 Trailblazer schools for sharing so much of their brilliant activity and inspiring other schools with their ideas and enthusiasm for schools’ football.

School visits

The ESFA team visited Derwent Primary School in Derby and Haywood Academy in Stoke-on-Trent to gain some insight into what they were up to for Schools’ Football Week 2025.

Pupils from Derwent Primary School spent the morning completing the Pokémon themed worksheets which were available to all schools as downloadable resources. The pupils found Pokémon on a wordsearch, designed their own Pokémon cards and created their own Pikachu headbands. After lunch, they headed to a local facility to take part in an afternoon of football, organised by students from the Derby Community Trust.

Haywood Academy embraced Schools’ Football Week by hosting a large scale intra- school tournament for all their classes. We saw over 500 pupils playing both competitive and non competitive football throughout the day, organised and refereed by their Sports Leaders.

Just two examples of the amazing efforts put into celebrating SFW 2025, not only by Trailblazer schools, but hundreds of schools right across the country!

What’s next?

The ESFA and Pokémon’s ambition is to continue to grow Schools’ Football Week year on year, but also use key data received from the schools that register their interest to find ways to create new and additional activity for those that are passionate about providing these opportunities to their pupils.

Thank you to everyone who took part in Schools’ Football Week campaign 2025, in partnership with Pokémon, we hope you enjoyed the week. Keep an eye out for news on Schools’ Football Week 2026, coming soon.

Photo credit: 353 Photography