World Sevens Football returns to London this week, with the third edition set for Brentford's Gtech Community Stadium from 28 to 30 May and Manchester United back among the eight-club field.
The competition will bring together Aston Villa, Chelsea, Everton, Leicester City, London City Lionesses, Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United, with each side guaranteed between three and five matches across the three-day event. The format is built for speed. Games will last 30 minutes, split into two 15-minute halves, and be played on grass pitches half the size of a standard 11-a-side field.
This week’s tournament matters because it is the latest stop in a grand slam series that has already produced two very different champions and now arrives with a smaller purse. Bayern Munich won the inaugural event in May 2025 in Estoril, Portugal, before San Diego Wave took the next tournament in December 2025 in Fort Lauderdale, US. The first two editions carried a $5m prize pool, but this year’s pot has been cut to $1.5m.
The teams have been split into two groups for the opening round-robin stage. Chelsea, Everton, Leicester and London City Lionesses are in Group 1. Aston Villa, Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United make up Group 2. The top two clubs in each group will move into the semi-finals, followed by a third-place match and the final.
That structure leaves little room for caution. Squads are limited to up to 14 players, while unlimited rolling substitutions are allowed, a setup that should keep the pace high and the margins tight. The winner will take $500,000 and the runners-up $250,000, with the top four clubs splitting their prize money evenly. Half of that top-four share is contractually bound to go to players and staff, while the other half is left to the club’s discretion.
Jennifer Mackesy and Justin Fishkin co-founded the competition, which has tried to carve out a place in the women’s game by packaging elite clubs into a condensed format with major cash at stake. Bayern Munich’s inaugural victory was worth £1.8m, underlining how sharply the prize structure has shifted since the series began.
Manchester United’s return adds another layer of interest after the club also featured in the first edition. With four clubs from the English game in each group and only two semi-final places available, the opening round should decide quickly which teams can handle the compressed format and which will be left chasing the game from the start.
