EFL Trophy
association football tournament in England, UK
The English Football League Trophy, known as the Jersey Mike's Trophy commercially, is an annual English football knockout competition open to all clubs in EFL League One, EFL League Two, and U-21 teams from the Premier League and the EFL Championship.
Launched in the 1983–84 football season as the Associate Members' Cup, the competition was renamed the Football League Trophy in 1992 after a reorganisation following the formation of the Premier League and again as the current EFL Trophy in 2016 due to The Football League changing its name to the English Football League.
The current competition begins with 16 regional groups, each containing 4 teams and divided between northern and southern sections depending on the clubs' geographic locations. The top two from each group qualify for the knockout stages before the two winners meet in late March or early April in the final at Wembley Stadium. Some Midlands and East Anglian clubs fluctuate between the north and south each season for every draw. Other details have varied over the years, including in some years inviting clubs from the National League, and holding a round-robin group stage before moving into knockout rounds.
The most successful clubs are Bristol City and Peterborough United, who have lifted the trophy three times each. The current winners are Luton Town, who defeated Stockport County 3–1 in the 2026 final at Wembley Stadium.
History
The competition was created in 1983, and was open to Third and Fourth Division Football League clubs (levels 3 and 4 of the English football pyramid). The competition was introduced to give clubs in the lower divisions of the Football League a more realistic opportunity to play at Wembley.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “EFL Trophy” as association football tournament in England, UK. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as association football tournament in England, UK. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q843159. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1983, 1992, 2016 and 2026.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “EFL Trophy”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow EFL Trophy primary sources, EFL Trophy archive and Trophy research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “EFL Trophy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.