Women's FA Cup prize money: the gap has narrowed — but not at every round

In 2015, a women’s team could win the FA Cup and walk away with £8,600. That same season, the men’s FA Cup winner collected £1.8 million. The gap was 209 to one.

The numbers have moved a long way since then. The question is how far — and whether the movement has reached every part of the pyramid.

The headline numbers

The Adobe Women’s FA Cup winner in the 2025–26 season receives £430,000. The Emirates FA Cup winner in 2026–27 receives £2,120,000. That is a ratio of roughly 5:1 — a dramatic narrowing from 2015, but still a gap large enough to fund a Championship club’s entire season.

The total prize pools tell a similar story. The men’s FA Cup prize fund stands at approximately £19.8 million. The women’s fund, after the near-£3 million increase announced in November 2023, reached £5,994,000. The women’s pot is now about 30 per cent of the men’s — up from around 15 per cent before the boost.

But the headline ratio obscures a more complicated distribution picture.

Round by round: where the gap lives

At the earliest qualifying rounds, the two competitions are not wildly far apart. A women’s team winning a preliminary round tie collects £600; a men’s team collects £1,125. The ratio there is under 2:1.

The gap begins to open at the first round proper. A women’s side winning that tie receives £6,000. A men’s side receives £47,750 — nearly eight times as much.

By the third round proper, where WSL and Premier League clubs enter their respective competitions, the women’s winner collects £35,000 while the men’s winner collects £121,500. At the semi-final stage: £160,000 versus £1,060,000.

The pattern is clear: the proportional gap is narrowest among the non-league and lower-tier clubs and widest at the point where the professional game takes over.

How we got here: the 2023 boost

The FA announced a near-£3 million increase to the women’s FA Cup prize fund in November 2023, bringing the total pot to £5,994,000. The announcement was widely covered as a doubling of the prize money, and the winners’ cheque rose from £100,000 to £430,000.

But the increase was not spread evenly across the competition. The FA confirmed that the extra funding would apply only from the third round proper onwards — the stage at which Women’s Super League and Championship clubs enter the tournament. Prize money for the first qualifying round through to the second round proper remained frozen at £1,854,000.

The effect was a significant redistribution of the total pot. Before the increase, clubs competing in the early rounds received 62.4 per cent of the total prize fund. After the increase, that share fell to 30.9 per cent — even though the absolute amounts had not changed.

“We cannot risk the Women’s FA Cup becoming like the men’s where 67 per cent of the prize pot ends up with Premier League clubs.”

Maggie Murphy, then chief executive of Championship side Lewes FC, praised the overall increase as “a step forward” but warned that concentrating the entire uplift in the later rounds risked widening the gap between the professional and semi-professional tiers. Lewes have campaigned for equal FA Cup prize money for several years.

The FA’s defence

The FA noted that the 2023 increase was the second successive season in which the women’s prize fund had grown. The previous year’s increase had been weighted towards the earlier rounds, from the first round qualifying to the second round proper, specifically to benefit clubs lower down the pyramid.

The FA also pointed out that 28 teams from outside the professional game — tiers three and below — reach the third round proper, meaning those clubs collectively accessed a minimum additional £404,000 compared to what they would have received at the same stage the previous season.

That argument is not without merit. A tier-three or tier-four women’s club that reaches the third round in the current system receives £35,000 for a win — substantially more than the £6,000 available at the second round proper. For a semi-professional side, one deep cup run now represents a meaningful financial event.

Where does this leave the gap?

The claim that “the FA Cup prize money gap is closing” is broadly true — but it needs a calendar.

In 2015, the women’s winner received 0.5 per cent of the men’s prize. By 2022–23, that had risen to about 5 per cent. After the 2023 boost, it reached roughly 21 per cent of the men’s equivalent. Measured over a decade, the trajectory is clear and the acceleration is real.

What the trajectory does not yet show is a plan to close the remaining five-to-one gap. The FA has not published a roadmap or timeline for equalising the prize funds. The men’s total pool remains at approximately £19.8 million, and the FA’s own figures show that the per-round men’s prizes continue to rise modestly year-on-year, which means the absolute gap in pounds — as distinct from the ratio — may actually be widening again.

The total prize pool comparison

Competition	Season	Winner’s prize	Total prize pool
Men’s FA Cup	2024–25	£2,000,000	~£19.8m
Men’s FA Cup	2026–27	£2,120,000	~£19.8m (frozen)
Women’s FA Cup	2022–23 (pre-boost)	£100,000	~£3.0m
Women’s FA Cup	2023–24 onwards	£430,000	£5,994,000

Our conclusion

The women’s FA Cup prize money has improved substantially, and the direction of travel is unmistakeable. The winner now receives more than four times what it did before the 2023 increase. The ratio between the men’s and women’s winner’s prizes has narrowed from over 200:1 to under 5:1 in a decade.

But the improvement has been uneven. Most of the 2023 uplift landed in the rounds where professional clubs already compete, while the early-round clubs — the ones for whom £600 or £1,800 can determine whether a cup run is a financial gain or a loss — saw their payouts frozen.

The gap, narrowed though it is, remains substantial. The men’s winner collects nearly five times the women’s winner, and the men’s total prize pool is more than three times the women’s. Until the FA publishes a timeline for further increases, the narrative of “closing the gap” describes progress — not parity.

From 209x to 5x: In 2015, the women’s FA Cup winner received £8,600 while the men’s winner got £1.8m — a ratio of 209:1. Today the gap is roughly 5:1 (£430,000 vs £2.12m). The trajectory is dramatic, but the distribution favours later rounds where professional clubs already compete. For a comparable prize-money analysis in European competition, see our UWCL prize money breakdown.

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