Earlier women's participation in Australian football While men playing Australian rules football is documented back to 1858, women's games have only been documented back to 1917, and the first lasting women's league was formed in 1981. Women's participation in the sport and the prevalence of women's leagues continued to grow into the 21st century.
Establishment In 2010, the AFL commissioned a report into the state of women's football around the country. Following the report, the AFL Commission began working toward the establishment of a national women's league, choosing to establish women's teams in AFL clubs rather than form separate clubs. The first on-field step towards the competition took place in early 2013, when the AFL announced an exhibition match to be played between women's teams representing and in June of that year. On 15 May 2013, the first women's draft was held, establishing the playing lists for the two clubs in the forthcoming exhibition match. The match played on 29 June 2013 marked the first time two women's sides had competed under the banners of AFL clubs. A crowd of 7,518 watched the historic match, which Melbourne won by 35 points. The exhibition match became a series between the clubs, with another game played in 2014 and two played in 2015, the last of which – on 16 August 2015 – was the first women's AFL game to be broadcast on free-to-air television. It attracted an average audience of 175,000, surpassing the 114,000 average audience for the AFL men's clash of the previous day, between Adelaide and Essendon. The success of these exhibition matches prompted the AFL to accelerate its plans for a nationwide women's competition, announcing a preferred start date of 2017. Prior to this, the league had announced only aspirational plans to have the women's competition established by 2020. The already-planned 2016 exhibition series was expanded at this time, with a total of ten matches to be played in venues across the country and featuring a range of new temporary representative teams. In 2016, the AFL opened a process for existing clubs to tender applications to join the new competition. The 18 clubs in the men's league had until 29 April 2016 to place a bid for a licence, with 13 clubs making bids: Adelaide, Brisbane, Carlton, Collingwood, Fremantle, Geelong, Greater Western Sydney, Melbourne, North Melbourne, Richmond, St Kilda, West Coast, and Western Bulldogs. The AFL's preferred distribution of clubs was four clubs from
Victoria and one each from
New South Wales,
Queensland,
South Australia, and
Western Australia. The inaugural teams were announced on 8 June 2016. , , and were the only teams to bid in their respective states and were granted licences to compete in 2017. Both Western Australian clubs made bids, with 's bid chosen ahead of the bid from . Eight Victorian clubs made bids: , , and were successful, with , , and being unsuccessful but granted provisional licences. Details about the branding of the league were released in the second half of 2016. On 15 September 2016, the AFL announced that the league would be named "AFL Women's" or AFLW for short, with the logo being unveiled on 19 September 2016. The logo is a stylised rendition of an
Australian rules football ground goal square and goal posts, drawn from a perspective that resembles a "W". The first premiership game was played at Ikon Park on Friday, 3 February 2017. The AFL had initially planned to host the game at Melbourne's Olympic Park Oval, with a capacity of just 7,000, but was forced to change to Ikon Park due to overwhelming interest and a need for more seating. The match was deemed a "lockout" with a capacity crowd of 24,568 in attendance, with estimates of a few thousand left outside. Gillon McLachlan, the AFL's CEO, personally apologised to those who missed out. The game was also a great success on TV, attracting a national audience of 896,000, including 593,000 metropolitan free-to-air viewers, 180,000 regional free-to-air viewers, and 123,000 on Fox Footy. The Melbourne metropolitan audience of 424,000 was on par with that of Friday-night AFL men's matches.
Expansion (2019–present) The remaining AFL clubs would join the league in the follow years, with two clubs added in the 2019 season, four in 2020, and the last four in 2022. The 10 AFL clubs not originally participating in the competition were invited to bid for inclusion, with priority given to the five clubs that had submitted unsuccessful bids to participate in the inaugural season. The deadline to lodge submissions was 16 June 2017. The only clubs not to bid were and . worked with AFL Tasmania to craft its bid, with the club aiming to play home matches in
Melbourne,
Hobart, and
Launceston, and also to select half of its playing list from
Tasmania. A final decision on which clubs would be admitted to the competition was expected by the end of July 2017, but was delayed several times. On 27 September 2017, the AFL announced that and North Melbourne had been selected to enter the competition in 2019. North Melbourne retained its commitment to playing matches in Tasmania. The league then added four teams in 2020, with the AFL selecting , , and to join the competition. Due to the
COVID-19 pandemic, the
2020 season was curtailed and eventually cancelled without a premiership awarded. On 12 August 2021, the final four AFL clubs (, , Port Adelaide and Sydney) were granted licenses, and the league's
seventh season in 2022 was the first to feature all 18 AFL clubs. became the first expansion team, founded after the inaugural season, to win a premiership, when the Kangaroos defeated Brisbane by 30 points in the
2024 decider, following this up with a 40 point victory in the 2025 Grand Final rematch. ==Clubs==