Fulham Football Club is a professional football club based in Fulham, West London, England. The club competes in the Premier League, the top tier of English football. Founded in 1879, they have played home games at Craven Cottage since 1896. Fulham contest West London derby rivalries with Chelsea, Brentford and Queens Park Rangers. The club adopted a white shirt and black shorts as its kit in 1896, which has been used ever since.

Founded in 1879, they are London's oldest professional football club. They joined the Southern League in 1898 and won two First Division titles (1905–06 and 1906–07), as well as two Second Division titles and a Western League title. Elected into the Second Division of the Football League in 1907, Fulham would win the Third Division South in 1931–32, four years after being relegated. They won the Second Division title in 1948–49, though were relegated after three seasons. Promoted back to the First Division again in 1958–59, the form of star player Johnny Haynes helped Fulham to remain in the top-flight until consecutive relegations occurred by 1969. They were promoted in 1970–71 and went on to reach the final of the 1974–75 FA Cup.

Fulham drifted between the second and fourth tiers until being taken over by Mohamed Al-Fayed in 1997. They went on to win two divisional titles in three seasons to reach the Premier League by 2001. They won the UEFA Intertoto Cup in 2002 and were beaten in the 2010 final of the UEFA Europa League. However, 13 consecutive seasons in the top flight culminated in relegation in 2014. Since then, the club have moved between the first and second tiers under new owner Shahid Khan. Fulham changed divisions in five successive seasons between 2017–18 to 2021–22, being relegated after winning the 2018 and 2020 EFL Championship play-off finals. They then won the 2021–22 EFL Championship title, settling in the Premier League since 2022.

Fulham were formed in 1879 as Fulham St Andrew's Church Sunday School F.C., founded by worshippers (mostly adept at cricket) at the Church of England on Star Road, West Kensington (St Andrew's, Fulham Fields). Fulham's mother church still stands today with a plaque commemorating the team's foundation. They won the West London Amateur Cup in 1887 and, having shortened the name from Fulham St Andrews to its present form in December 1888, they then won the West London League in 1893 at the first attempt. One of the club's first ever kits was half red, half white shirts with white shorts worn in the 1886–87 season. Fulham started playing at their current ground at Craven Cottage in 1896, their first game against now defunct rivals Minerva.

The club gained professional status on 12 December 1898, the same year that they were admitted into the Southern League's Second Division. They were the third club from London to turn professional, following Arsenal, then named Royal Arsenal 1891, and Millwall in 1893. They adopted a red and white kit during the 1896–97 season. In 1902–03, the club won promotion from this division, entering the Southern League First Division. The club's first recorded all-white club kit came in 1903, and ever since then the club has been playing in all-white shirts and black shorts, with socks going through various evolutions of black and/or white, but are now normally white-only. The club won the Southern League twice, in 1905–06 and 1906–07.

Fulham joined The Football League after the second of their Southern League triumphs. The club's first league game, playing in the Second Division's 1907–08 season, saw them lose 1–0 at home to Hull City in September 1907. The first win came a few days later at Derby County's Baseball Ground by a score line of 1–0. Fulham finished the season three points short of promotion in fourth place. The club progressed all the way to the semi-final of that season's FA Cup, a run that included an 8–3 away win at Luton Town. In the semi-final, however, they were heavily beaten, 6–0, by Newcastle United. This is still a record loss for an FA Cup semi-final game. Two years later, the club won the London Challenge Cup in the 1909–10 season. Fulham's first season in Division Two turned out to be the highest that the club would finish for 21 years, until in 1927–28 when the club were relegated to the 3rd Division South, created in 1920. Hussein Hegazi, an Egyptian forward, was one of the first non-British players to appear in The Football League, though he only played one game for Fulham in 1911, marked with a goal, afterwards playing for non-league Dulwich Hamlet.

During this period, businessman and politician Henry Norris was the club chairman and curiously he had an indirect role in the foundation of Fulham's local rivals Chelsea. When he rejected an offer from businessman Gus Mears to move Fulham to land where the present-day Chelsea stadium Stamford Bridge is situated, Mears decided to create his own team to occupy the ground. In 1910, Norris started to combine his role at Fulham with the chairmanship of Arsenal. Fulham became the first British team to sell hot dogs at their ground in 1926. Fulham had several high-profile international players during the 1920s, including Len Oliver and Albert Barrett.

After finishing fifth, seventh and ninth (out of 22 teams) in their first three seasons in the Third Division South, Fulham won the division in the 1931–32 season. In doing so they beat Torquay United 10–2, won 24 out of 42 games and scored 111 goals, thus being promoted back to the Second Division. The next season they missed out on a second consecutive promotion, finishing third behind Tottenham Hotspur and Stoke City. A mixed bag of league performances followed, although the club also reached another FA Cup semi-final during the 1935–36 season. Fulham were also to draw with Austria in 1936 before Anschluss. On 8 October 1938, Craven Cottage saw its all-time highest attendance at a match against Millwall, with a crowd of 49,335 watching the game.