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Stoke City Football Club is a professional football club based in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England, which plays in the EFL Championship, the second tier of English football.

Founded as Stoke Ramblers in 1863, the club changed its name to Stoke in 1878 and then to Stoke City in 1925 after Stoke-on-Trent was granted city status. It is the second-oldest professional football club in the world after Notts County, and is one of the founding members of the Football League.

Its first title was won in 1923 by winning the league cup, when the team beat Chelsea 2-1. The highest position achieved by the team was first place, in the 1923 season. It was one of the best seasons by any individual club, with 102 points in the league. Stoke played in the 2010-11 FA Cup final, losing 1-0 to Manchester City, and were semi-finalists in the 1898-99, 1970-71 and 1971-72 editions. Stoke has competed in European football on 15 occasions. Some of the most memorable are: first, in the 1924-25 season (being knocked out in the round of 16 by 1. FC Kaiserslautern), then being eliminated by Ajax in the quarter-finals, and the most recent was in 2011-12, when it reached the quarter-finals of the European competition against Hajduk Split of Croatia, after beating PSG of France 2-1 on aggregate.

Stoke's stadium is the bet365 Stadium, which holds 35,573 spectators. Before the stadium opened in 1997, the club was based at the Victoria Ground, which had been its home since 1878. The club's nickname is 'The Potters', named after the pottery industry in Stoke-on-Trent. Its shirt has vertical red and white stripes, with white shorts and socks. The team's rivals are West Bromwich Albion, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Port Vale.