Celtic Glasgow · History

Celtic Football Club, universally known as Celtic, is a professional football club from the east end of Glasgow, Scotland, and one of the most decorated institutions in the British game. Founded on 6 November 1887 by Brother Walfrid, a Marist monk from County Sligo, its original purpose was not sport but charity: to raise money to feed poor Irish immigrant families in the parishes of St Mary's, Sacred Heart and St Michael's. Nearly fourteen decades later the club plays at Celtic Park, a 60,411-capacity stadium known to everyone in Scotland as Parkhead, competes in the Scottish Premiership, and remains the only Scottish club ever to win the European Cup. Celtic are the reigning Scottish champions and are managed by Martin O'Neill.

A club founded to feed the poor

Celtic were formed in a church hall in the Calton district in November 1887, with a constitution that promised to provide meals for children in Glasgow's poorest East End parishes. The name was chosen deliberately to bind the Irish and Scottish identities of the immigrant community together. The first match was played on 28 May 1888 against Rangers, and within five years the club had become a sporting force as well as a charitable one, winning the Scottish Cup in 1892 and its first league championship in 1892-93. That double identity — a football club that was also a social project — has shaped everything about Celtic since, from its supporter culture to its ownership of the Celtic FC Foundation.

Willie Maley and the first golden ages

Under Willie Maley, who served the club as player, secretary and manager for more than four decades, Celtic became the dominant team of Edwardian Scotland, taking six consecutive league titles between 1905 and 1910. The side of the First World War years was even more formidable: Celtic won four championships in a row and set a British record of 62 competitive matches unbeaten between 1915 and 1917, a run achieved against the backdrop of falling attendances, wage cuts and the loss of players at the front. The club also looked outwards early, touring Europe before the war and returning with the Ferencvaros Cup. A second Maley peak arrived in the 1930s, crowned by victory in the 1938 Empire Exhibition Trophy.

Jock Stein and the Lisbon Lions

The greatest chapter began in 1965 with the appointment of Jock Stein, a former Celtic centre-half who rebuilt the club in his own image. On 25 May 1967 in Lisbon, Celtic beat Internazionale 2-1 to become the first British club to win the European Cup, coming from a goal down against Helenio Herrera's catenaccio with strikes from Tommy Gemmell and Steve Chalmers. Every member of that team, forever known as the Lisbon Lions, was born within roughly thirty miles of Celtic Park — a feat unimaginable in modern football. That season Celtic won every competition they entered. Stein's side went on to claim nine consecutive league titles between 1966 and 1974 and reached a second European Cup final in 1970, losing to Feyenoord in Milan. Billy McNeill, Jimmy Johnstone, Bobby Murdoch and Bobby Lennox became permanent fixtures of the club's mythology.

The Old Firm

Celtic's rivalry with Rangers, known as the Old Firm, is among the most intense in world football. Born of the two clubs' proximity and of the religious and cultural fault lines of nineteenth-century Glasgow, it long since outgrew sport: the fixture divides a city, fills stadiums and carries a political charge that few derbies anywhere can match. Celtic hold some of its most celebrated results, including the 7-1 win in the 1957 League Cup final, still a record score for a British major cup final, and a 5-0 Scottish Cup victory in 1925. In 1953 they beat the champions of England to lift the Coronation Cup, a tournament staged to mark the accession of Elizabeth II. The rivalry has shaped both clubs' recruitment, finances and self-image for well over a century.

Seville, the trebles and the modern era

After the lean decades of the 1980s and 1990s — during which Celtic stopped Rangers equalling their nine-in-a-row in 1998 — the club was rebuilt again by Martin O'Neill in his first spell, from 2000 to 2005. He won three league titles and led Celtic to the 2003 UEFA Cup final in Seville, where an estimated 80,000 supporters travelled to see a 3-2 extra-time defeat by Porto in one of the largest peacetime movements of Scottish fans. Gordon Strachan and Neil Lennon kept the club dominant domestically, and Lennon's Celtic famously beat Barcelona at Parkhead in the Champions League in 2012. Under Brendan Rodgers the club then produced the most complete run in Scottish history: an unbeaten domestic season in 2016-17 worth a record 106 points, and four consecutive domestic trebles between 2016-17 and 2019-20, the so-called quadruple treble.

Honours, Celtic Park and the support

Celtic's trophy record is the largest in Scotland: 56 league championships, 43 Scottish Cups and 22 Scottish League Cups, alongside the 1967 European Cup and the 1953 Coronation Cup. Jimmy McGrory, who scored 550 goals in his career, remains the club's totemic marksman. Celtic Park, expanded to 60,411 seats in the 1990s, is the largest football stadium in Scotland and among the biggest club grounds in Britain; the standing section in the north-east corner and the Green Brigade ultras group have made its European nights a byword for noise. The club's Irish heritage travels with it, sustaining one of the largest and most geographically dispersed supporter bases in the sport, from Ireland and North America to Australia.

Martin O'Neill's second spell

The 2025-26 season was one of turbulence and reward. Brendan Rodgers left in October 2025, and after an interim period Martin O'Neill returned to the dugout in January 2026, more than two decades after his first spell. Celtic retained the league title and beat Dunfermline Athletic 3-1 to win the Scottish Cup, but lost the League Cup final to St Mirren. Adam Idah left for Swansea City in the summer of 2026.