Opinion: 2025 Showed Why Cerebral Palsy Football is Ready for Next Step

With notable moments on and off the pitch last year, our game is ready to take the next step, writes Oliver Walker-Peel.

If Cerebral Palsy Football was ever regarded as a sleeping giant, 2025 might have been the year it was fully awoken.

Fresh off the back of the IFCPF Men’s and Women’s World Cups to round out 2024, which reached a combined 397 million people, the regional championships took the spotlight in 2025. The sport travelled far and wide across the year just gone, with tournaments on four continents, starting with the IFCPF Men’s Euros and Women’s Intercontinental Cup back in August at Loughborough University in England. From the start of that tournament on, the players did the rest. Across the 76 matches played, 457 goals were scored, an average of just over six a game. 44 players scored hat-tricks, and 25 countries put teams forward, including the Netherlands, Australia and the United States, who sent both their men’s and women’s teams to tournaments.

Those 76 matches we saw created a multitude of storylines. The United States upsetting the status quo across both programs, the women’s side enacting revenge on Australia for the Women’s World Cup Final months earlier by winning the Intercontinental Cup Final against the same opponent, and the men breaking through the Argentina and Brazil stronghold by taking home the IFCPF Copa América trophy. Indonesia and England both making home tournament finals and giving tangible hope to their respective nations. Uruguay joining the IFCPF family. These are only scratching the surface, and there are so many to come with a double World Cup year coming.

The excitement on the pitch was reflected in the numbers off it. Over 10 million social media views, a new rebrand, and 1.9 million Instagram reach (a 492% increase year on year), and over 24,000 hours of YouTube watch time, showing undeniable interest in our sport from all corners of the globe. Couple that with the official Brisbane 2032 Paralympic Games application being submitted, it wasn’t just on the park where the sport was able to shine. The sport could return to the Games for the first time in over 15 years, and could allow for the first-ever women’s Paralympic football event, a groundbreaking prospect

There is now a perfect platform for the game to grow in 2026, and no better opportunity for it to do so than a World Cup. The best athletes in one place, hoping to bring home glory of the highest order. While it might look different to the FIFA Men’s World Cup that will also take place this year, it won’t feel so different for the players competing. 

Can Ukraine get its hands on the men’s trophy once more? Might England break through? Can the United States men follow up their Copa América triumph? Will Australia become back-to-back  Women’s World Cup champions? Can the USA once and for all cement itself as the best in the women’s game beyond all reasonable doubt? Both competitions will be appointment viewing. 

It’s not just the World Cups where athletes will have the chance to showcase their ability with a Club World Cup and a Men’s World Championships tournament, for the best teams outside the top 16, on the cards for 2026. 

Long story short, there will be so many games, so many moments and so many ways to follow along this year. In a 365-day period in which so much will be decided, find a way to contribute. Follow the social media pages, watch the matches, support the movements when the brights lights are off.

It’s not just a game, it’s a movement. Moving in the right direction.