The rise of women’s football in Switzerland varies according to the region

Women’s football has a dazzling development. But if some clubs and certain cantons are a hit, others have more trouble finding a place.

Mark Walther

Euro 2025 is the largest female sporting event ever organized in Switzerland. Hundreds of thousands of people vibrate in stadiums, during public retransmissions or in front of their screen to support Lia Wälti, Géraldine Reuteler and their teammates. But far from the big scene, a more contrasting reality appears: the development of women’s and junior football in Switzerland varies strongly depending on the region.

Over the past five years, the number of dismissed footballers in Switzerland has experienced a spectacular increase: +50%. Today, some 41,000 women and girls are playing in Swiss clubs. They thus represent 12% of all licensees. The highest proportion is found in the largest regional association in the country, the Zurich region football association, with 15.4%. Other associations also display figures higher than the national average: those of Argovie, Valais, Eastern Switzerland, Berne-Jura and Friborg.

The share of players licensed in French -speaking associations:

It is in Ticino that women and girls are the least represented: in the clubs of “Federazione Ticinese di Calcio”, only 5.9% of dismissed people are female.

One of the reasons that can explain the low proportion recorded in Ticino is cultural proximity to Italy. In the neighboring country of the South, women’s football is much less popular than in Switzerland. With a population of 59 million inhabitants, only a few thousand more women practice football compared to Switzerland.

Désirée Grundbacher is the only Swiss arbiter chosen for Euro 2025.Keystone

But Ticino is not the only region where the majority of clubs have few women and girls in their ranks, as revealed by the data analysis of 1309 Swiss clubs. In half of the clubs, the proportion of female licensees is less than 4%. One in four clubs is even exclusively male. Conversely, the players are in the majority in 21 clubs. Among them are a dozen exclusively female clubs, such as Servette FC Chênois female, FC Sion female or AS Gambarogno, an important Ticino club.

In addition, in Lucerne, Aarau or the Grasshopper Club Zurich (GC), the women’s teams are organized within independent structures. On the other hand, at FC Basel, FC Zurich or FC Saint-Gall, they are among the same clubs as the male teams.

Here are the top 5 French clubs that have the largest female representation among their teams:

The Servette FC Chênois Female (here Korhonen in the Champions League) is the flagship club of female football in French -speaking Switzerland.Image: KEYSTONE

The Swiss Football Association (ASF) sees an opportunity in the euro at home to give new momentum to women’s football in the country. With her initiative called “Here to Stay”, she set ambitious goals: By 2027, the number of licensed players must double to reach 80,000. She also intends to double the number of coach and female referees. Several regional associations, cantons and cities have joined the initiative and launched their own projects.

The data on the number of players and the proportion of women per club come from the Swiss Football Association (ASF). They are based on the information provided by the clubs during their registration process. In addition to football clubs, futsal clubs are also included in the data set.

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