From the goldfields-era origins of Australian rules football, through the formation of the VFA in 1877, the great split of 1897, the 1989 rebrand to the AFL, and the 1996 revival of the VFL as Australia's premier state league.
The Victorian Football League is the second-oldest continuously operating football league in the world — older than English football's Football League, older than American baseball's National League, older than every Australian rules competition except the one it sprang from. Its history is the history of Australian football itself.
Australian rules football emerged in Melbourne in 1858, codified the following year by Tom Wills, William Hammersley, James Thompson and Thomas Smith — a small committee meeting at the Parade Hotel in East Melbourne to draft what they called the "Rules of the Melbourne Football Club". The game spread rapidly through the Victorian colony, played on cricket grounds in winter to keep cricketers fit and bored gold-rush diggers entertained.
By the 1860s, dozens of clubs had formed across Melbourne and regional Victoria. Williamstown FC, founded in 1864, remains one of the oldest continuously operating clubs in Australian football — older than the formal codification of the rules itself. Port Melbourne (1874), Frankston (1887), Coburg (1891) and others followed in the decades before any organising body existed to coordinate them.
For nearly twenty years, intercolonial and inter-club matches were arranged on an ad-hoc basis. There were no standings, no premierships, no formal seasons. Something had to give.
On 17 May 1877, delegates from Melbourne's leading football clubs met in the city to form the Victorian Football Association — the world's first organised Australian rules football competition. Eight clubs played that first season: Albert Park, Ballarat, Carlton, Hotham (later North Melbourne), Melbourne, Inglewood, Barwon and St Kilda.
The VFA grew quickly. By the 1890s it had become the dominant football competition in Australia, with crowds rivalling cricket and racing. But the rapid growth created strain. The biggest clubs — South Melbourne, Geelong, Essendon, Collingwood, Melbourne, Fitzroy, Carlton and St Kilda — believed the smaller clubs were holding the competition back. They wanted bigger crowds, more money, and a more elite product.
In October 1896, these eight clubs broke away from the VFA to form the Victorian Football League, scheduled to commence the following season.
The new Victorian Football League launched in 1897 with eight founding clubs. Essendon won the first VFL premiership. Within two decades the VFL had become the dominant force in Australian rules football, while the VFA continued as a second-tier competition with a fluctuating roster of suburban and regional clubs.
Throughout the twentieth century the two competitions ran in parallel. The VFL added clubs gradually — Richmond and University in 1908, Footscray, North Melbourne and Hawthorn in 1925 — eventually settling on the twelve-club Victorian competition that would dominate Australian football for fifty years. The VFA meanwhile attracted clubs like Port Melbourne, Williamstown, Brunswick, Coburg, Prahran, Sandringham and Box Hill — clubs that built strong followings of their own without ever crossing over to the VFL.
By the 1980s the VFL had expanded beyond Victoria — to Sydney (1982), Brisbane (1987) and Perth (1987) — fundamentally changing what the competition was. A national rebrand became inevitable.
In late 1989, the Victorian Football League rebranded itself as the Australian Football League, formalising what had already been true for years — it was no longer a Victorian competition. The VFL name was retired at the senior level. Adelaide joined the AFL in 1991, Fremantle in 1995, Port Adelaide in 1997. The competition has since expanded to 18 clubs, with Tasmania set to make 19 in 2028.
The VFA continued as the leading second-tier competition through this period, but it faced its own crisis. AFL clubs had begun pulling their reserves out of the old VFL reserves competition (which itself folded in 1999), and what had been a smooth pathway from VFA to VFL was now a tangled mess of competing development structures.
In 1996, the VFA renamed itself the Victorian Football League — a deliberate decision to take back the name the senior competition had abandoned. The modern VFL was born.
The reborn VFL has evolved into something neither the VFA nor the original VFL ever was: a mixed competition combining AFL reserves, AFL-aligned clubs and fully standalone community clubs. In 1999 Hawthorn aligned with Box Hill, Collingwood with the old Williamstown reserves arrangement, Essendon with Bendigo — partnerships that gave the standalone clubs access to AFL list players while preserving their independent identities.
Throughout the 2000s and 2010s the competition reshaped repeatedly. Some AFL clubs brought their reserves operations in-house — Geelong in 2000, Collingwood in 1999, Essendon in 2014, Richmond, GWS and Essendon also in 2014, North Melbourne and St Kilda in 2018. Others maintained alignments. Standalone clubs Port Melbourne, Williamstown, Coburg, Frankston and Werribee continued as community-owned operations.
The biggest geographical expansion came in 2021 when Brisbane Lions, Gold Coast Suns and Sydney Swans joined the VFL following the demise of the NEAFL — the AFL's previous reserves competition for northern clubs. The VFL became a genuinely national reserves comp for the first time. Southport Sharks had joined as a Queensland standalone in 2019.
The latest addition is Tasmania Devils, entering in 2026 as a standalone state representative side ahead of Tasmania's planned AFL entry in 2028. The 2026 competition fields 22 teams across four states — the equal-most ever to contest a VFA/VFL premiership in a single division.
The 2026 VFL is the 144th season of VFA/VFL football — an unbroken line of organised competition stretching back to that meeting at the Parade Hotel in 1877. It is the development league for every Australian rules footballer who isn't yet at AFL level. It is the only Australian competition where the historic identities of football's earliest clubs still play under their original names.
When a young Williamstown player kicks a goal at Downer Oval, or a Borough fan watches Port Melbourne run out at North Port Oval, they are continuing a tradition older than the country's federation, older than the rules of cricket, older than the codification of the game they're playing.