Association football in Honduras is a national sport. It is the most popular sport among Hondurans, becoming popular in the 20th century. Over half of the people in Honduras are interested in football.

Honduras performed memorably in three World Cups, Spain 1982, South Africa 2010, and Brazil 2014. The nation also competes in the Copa America, UNCAF Nations Cup, Olympic Games, and in FIFA U-20 World Cups. Its national team is considered the strongest football team in central America alongside Costa Rica.^{[citation needed]}

In the territories that are now Honduras, the Mayans in Copán played the game of Pok-ta-pok in fields within their cities. The game used a ball of rubber. This sport was practiced in the 1000s AD, and it was a predecessor of basketball and football.

There are many accounts of how association football started in Honduras. A newspaper owned by the Ustariz family (French descendants) was delivered by a French ship, staffed almost entirely by an English crew. It arrived on the coasts of Port Cortés in 1896, bringing with them many soccer balls, which they used for fun in their free time every time they came to Honduras. The practice of this new sport attracted the curiosity of the inhabitants of the port, who saw how the English sailors had fun playing football. These sailors encouraged the Hondurans to learn the game, and play along with them.

Luis Fernando, a son of French immigrants, recorded that some merchants in Puerto Cortes had given him a football in 1896, and that football was played in Honduras since then. In 1906, the republic's government hired a Guatemalan professor named Miguel Arcangel to teach football at the Escuela Normal de Varones in Tegucigalpa. Three years later, the Spanish monk Niglia introduced the game at the Instituto Salesiano San Miguel in Comayagua.

By the time Honduran football took its first steps, several countries in Europe and South America already had formed their respective football associations, and others were in process of forming. This growth of associations on a worldwide level, and the marked interest of the "catrachos" by the practice of the soccer, made the government in Honduras, under the control of the president Manuel Bonilla, interested in the sport.

It for that reason that, in 1906, the government hired the services of Miguel Saravia, a Guatemalan, to give football classes for the students of the School of Men of Tegucigalpa. Three years later, Saravia would be joined by his Spanish father, Niglia, to teach football, but this time in the Salesian Institute San Miguel of Comayagüela. Football became popular, especially in higher classes, although it couldn't compete against baseball, which remained the most popular sport until 1917.

The first professional clubs were founded in the early 1900s. The oldest team in Honduran football is Club Deportivo Olimpia. It was founded as a baseball club on 12 June 1912 by the team known as Juventud Olimpica, transforming into a football club later on. Other clubs were founded in Tegucigalpa, such as Lituania, Signos, Trebol, Honduras, Atletico Deportes, La Nueva Era, Colon and Spring. None of them exist now.