Wrexham Association Football Club (Welsh: Clwb Pêl-droed Wrecsam) is a professional football club based in Wrexham, Wales. Formed in 1864, it is the oldest club in Wales and the third-oldest professional football team in the world. The club competes in the EFL Championship, the second tier of the English football league system.
Domestically, the club has won the Welsh Cup a record twenty-three times, the short-lived FAW Premier Cup a record five times, the Football League Trophy in 2005 and the FA Trophy in 2013. Recently, following five unsuccessful play-off campaigns in the National League, Wrexham achieved three promotions in three seasons, from 2022 to 2025, through winning the 2022–23 National League, finishing runner-up in the 2023–24 EFL League Two and also in the 2024–25 EFL League One. Thus, Wrexham secured a spot in the EFL Championship, and became the first club across the top five tiers of English football to achieve three consecutive promotions.
On 12 October 1863, a group of local businessmen formed a new organisation 'The United Volunteer Services Club' to provide athletic sport for the young men of Wrexham, in order to keep them from spending their spare time in public houses.
This organisation provided the ideological basis for the future formation of Wrexham Football Club, which is now the oldest football club 'still in existence today' that was founded according to temperance principles. Evan Morris, Charles Edward Kershaw and Joseph Wilbraham Clark were 3 of the founding members of the United Volunteer Services Club, who were also members of the Denbighshire County Cricket Club; and they used their influence within the cricket club to bring their ideals to fruition.
Wrexham Football Club was formed on 4 October 1864, in The Turf Tavern (named the Turf Hotel by 1872), by members of the cricket club who wanted to provide sporting activity for the young men of the town throughout the winter months. This makes them the fifth oldest association football team, the third oldest professional club and the oldest in Wales. Their first game was played on 22 October 1864 at the Denbighshire County Cricket Ground (later known as the Racecourse Ground), against 10 men of the Prince of Wales Fire Brigade. The 10 founding members who played for Wrexham Football Club in that first ever game were; Charles Edward Kershaw, William Tootell, Thomas Broster, Thomas Hanmer, Edward Ephraim Knibbs, Thomas Heath, Thomas Henry Sykes, John Taylor, George Rumsey Johnston, and Joseph Roberts. The club lost 2–1 to the brigade.
In these early years, Wrexham were leaders of the campaign to restrict teams to eleven players on the pitch at any one time (as early matches could feature teams with up to seventeen players on each side). In 1876, the newly formed Football Association of Wales (FAW) organised the Welsh national team's first international match against Scotland, where trials were held at the Racecourse Ground and two Wrexham players, Edwin Cross and Alfred Davies made the squad.
