2025 AFL season

The 2025 AFL season was the 129th season of the Australian Football League, the highest-level senior men's Australian rules football competition in Australia. The season featured 18 clubs and ran from 7 March to 27 September, comprising a 23-match home-and-away season over 25 rounds, followed by a four-week finals series featuring the top eight clubs.
The won the premiership, defeating by 47 points in the 2025 AFL Grand Final; it was their second consecutive premiership and fifth AFL premiership overall. won the minor premiership by finishing atop the home-and-away ladder with an 18–5 win–loss record, but lost both of its finals. 's Matt Rowell won the Brownlow Medal as the league's best and fairest player, and Geelong's Jeremy Cameron won his second Coleman Medal as the league's leading goalkicker.

Background

In September 2022, the AFL announced a seven-year, $4.5 billion broadcast rights deal with the Seven Network, Foxtel and Telstra, the biggest sports broadcast rights deal in Australian history, effective from the 2025 season. Key points of the deal included:

Seven and its streaming service 7plus would broadcast Thursday night, Friday night, Sunday afternoon and all marquee matches, with the first 16 rounds of the home-and-away season featuring Thursday night matches.
Foxtel and its streaming service Kayo would broadcast every match of the season outside of the grand final, and would utilise its own commentary teams and graphics for all matches for the first time; another Foxtel streaming service, Binge, would also simulcast some matches and include other Foxtel football programs.
All Saturday matches outside of marquee matches would be exclusive to Foxtel and Kayo for the first eight rounds of the season, while all Saturday night matches in the last eight rounds of the season would be exclusive to Seven.
Seven would broadcast matches involving non-Victorian clubs live into their local markets, outside of select matches on delay.

Ahead of the season's fixture release in November, the AFL further elaborated that the home-and-away season would feature Thursday night matches in 23 of the 25 rounds, with each of the first 16 rounds plus seven other rounds – as part of a floating fixture to be determined later in the season – having matches scheduled on Thursday nights. The following day, the AFL announced the addition on Sunday night matches as a semi-regular fixture in 2025, with nine of the first 16 rounds featuring a Sunday night match. In the same month, and unveiled new club logos, while unveiled a new logo and playing guernseys as part of a rebrand of the club. A match between the Indigenous All-Stars and took place at Optus Stadium in February 2025, marking the first Indigenous All-Stars match since 2015.

Pre-season

Indigenous All-Stars match

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Practice matches

All starting times are local time. Sources: ;

Overview

The season began with Opening Round, an initiative introduced in 2024, in which the New South Wales and Queensland clubs contest matches against four Victorian clubs to open the season; the eight clubs involved would then have a bye before round 5 so that all clubs would have played the same number of matches leading into Gather Round. In the two Queensland matches, the Brisbane Lions were to host Geelong and unfurl their 2024 premiership flag on 6 March to open the season, and Gold Coast was to host Essendon on 8 March; however, on 4 March the decision was made to postpone both matches due to the projected impact of Cyclone Alfred, which was forecast to make landfall in Brisbane later that week. The matches were rescheduled for rounds 3 and 24, respectively.
The hosted a match against Collingwood at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in round 2, their first home match at the venue since 2009, to celebrate the centenary of their entry into the VFL/AFL; to celebrate the occasion, the club reverted to its former name, Footscray, for the round. In round 5, Gather Round, which was played in South Australia for the third consecutive year, featured matches in the Barossa Valley region for the first time, with two matches played at Barossa Park, a new $40 million recreational facility in Lyndoch, along with two matches at Norwood Oval and the other five at Adelaide Oval, including two separately ticketed matches on the Saturday. Hawthorn also hosted a match to celebrate its 100-year anniversary in the VFL/AFL, against in round 8.
In round 11, during Sir Doug Nicholls Round, the Dreamtime at the 'G match between Essendon and Richmond was moved to the Friday night primetime slot for the first time, having traditionally been held on a Saturday night during the round; two separately ticketed matches were held back-to-back the following day at Marvel Stadium, featuring several Sir Doug Nicholls Round activities in the Docklands precinct throughout the day. commenced a new arrangement to play two of its home matches each season in Western Australia from 2025 to 2027 – each against one of the two Western Australian clubs, Fremantle and, with one match played at Hands Oval, Bunbury, and the other at Optus Stadium – as part of a deal with the AFL, Tourism Western Australia and the Western Australian government to provide financial security to the club, and as part of its strategy to exit its existing deal to play home matches in Hobart, where it had played at least two per season since 2012; in 2025, the club played its Western Australian home matches consecutively, in rounds 13 and 14, and two matches in Hobart as part of the final year of the club's deal with the state.
From round 16 onwards, the start times for Sunday afternoon matches televised by the Seven Network were moved forward by five minutes to avoid prolonged matches stretching past 6:00 pm AEST and delaying the network's flagship Melbourne news bulletin which follows immediately after.

Home-and-away season

All starting times are local time. Source:

Round 7

Round 15

Round 23

Ladder

Progression by round

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Home matches and membership

The following table includes all home match attendance figures from the home-and-away season, excluding neutral matches.
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Finals series

All starting times are local time. Source:

Win–loss table

The following table can be sorted from biggest winning margin to biggest losing margin for each round. If multiple matches in a round are decided by the same margin, these margins are sorted by percentage. Home matches are in bold, neutral matches are underlined, postponed matches are italicised and opponents are listed above the margins.
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Season notes

The Brisbane Lions recorded their longest unbeaten start to a season, winning their first five matches.
Gold Coast recorded its longest unbeaten start to a season, winning its first four matches.
West Coast recorded its longest winless start to a season, losing its first nine matches, and only won one match for the season, the fewest in a season in the club's history and the fewest in a season by any club since Greater Western Sydney won one match in 2013.
Essendon fielded 15 debutants during the season, breaking the AFL era record of 13 set by in 1991.
Adelaide won 18 matches during the home-and-away season, the most in the club's history, to win the minor premiership; however, the club lost both of its finals, becoming the first minor premier in the AFL era to do so, and the first since North Melbourne in 1983.
Gold Coast won 15 matches during the home-and-away season, the most in the club's history, to finish seventh and qualify for finals for the first time, having never previously finished higher than twelfth since its first AFL season in 2011.

Milestones

Source: ; other milestones sourced individually

Awards

Major awards

The Norm Smith Medal was awarded to the ' Will Ashcroft, becoming the youngest and third player to do so in consecutive seasons.
The Brownlow Medal was awarded to 's Matt Rowell.
The Coleman Medal was awarded to 's Jeremy Cameron; his tally of 83 goals was the most in a home-and-away season since 2009.
The Goal of the Year was awarded to Gold Coast's Noah Anderson.
The Mark of the Year was awarded to the ' Sam Darcy.
The AFL Rising Star was awarded to 's Murphy Reid.

Leading goalkickers