The 2026 Women’s FA Cup final will take place on Sunday 31 May at the legendary Wembley Stadium, with Brighton & Hove Albion taking on Manchester City. The match will be an interesting one as Brighton & Hove Albion have made it into their first ever women’s cup final, while Manchester City is attempting to win a domestic double after it won the 2025/26 Women’s Super League.
For the production, FilmNova is the host broadcaster for the final on behalf of British free-to-air commercial broadcaster Channel 4. Channel 4 won the terrestrial rights to the Women’s FA Cup for three seasons, beginning in 2025 and ending in 2028. Channel 4 is broadcasting one game per round from the third round onwards, all co-exclusive with TNT Sports, so while Channel 4 broadcasts around five matches per season, TNT Sports broadcasts around 19.
This is the channel’s first foray into live women’s club football, and it has chosen FilmNova to make sure everything goes smoothly while also maintaining the Channel 4 flavour.
The Women’s FA Cup final production will be carried out fully onsite, with FilmNova supported by technical services provider, Timeline TV.
Gemma Knight, match director for the Women’s FA Cup final, comments on FilmNovas’s approach to producing the women’s FA Cup: “I think the way we’ve approached it – and I think it’s really important to say this – is women’s football has to be treated with the same respect as men’s football. It’s just football.
“We’ve looked at it for as we would for any match; we’ve worked from the basic camera coverage with what you would expect to see – like 18 yard cameras – and built around that as best we can within obviously budget constraints and expectations from the FA. We look at the match coverage itself as you would for any football, but then what we try and do is the additional bits around that; where we put the Channel 4 colour and a different vibe, and try and give it that different personality to what you’re used to.”
The production for the Women’s FA Cup final is set to both entertain and inform, giving the broadcast the gravitas it deserves as well as the Channel 4 excitement. This should serve all audiences, from the hardcore fans through to new and younger viewers.
Says Knight on how that is being executed in the production and through its core presenting duo: “So if you tune in as a seasoned women’s football lover, you’re getting the football side that you love and respect and the game is covered with all the editorial. But also if you’re tuning in as somebody who’s new to football, you’ve got the personality of Maisie [Adam] who is one of the biggest football fans I’ve ever met, but you’ve also got the expertise of Jill [Scott] who is obviously an exceptional footballer, but also an exceptional person and loves the sport. So all that personality shines through outside the game.”
Elevating the game
While the regular match spec runs from eight to 12 cameras depending on the location and what is possible in each particular stadium, Knight says the camera spec for the final is bigger than for a regular season game.
She explains what we can expect to be used at this point, two weeks out from the final when details are still in the process of being finalised: “We’re pushing it up to around 20 cameras now. It’s not a 100% confirmed yet, but it will be soon.
“We have VAR and we have goal line technology for the final, which will be fantastic because we haven’t had that yet in the competition,” Knight continues. “That is something I would like to see going forward, which is tough [to achieve] because we’re playing at smaller grounds, but it would be great to get some VAR presence in the early rounds on the Women’s FA Cup; that would be my want going forward. But it’s difficult because the venues we’re dealing with for the Women’s FA Cup are often smaller; they don’t have the pre-installed cameras for things like VAR and goal line technology. But we do have goal line technology and VAR for the final, which is fantastic. And for me, it is as it should be for a match at Wembley.”
Knight is excited to get two cameras in particular for the final, although one is not yet confirmed: “We’re looking at having a shallow depth of field gimbal, which we see so much now on the men’s game so it’s nice to get that for a woman’s final. And we’re really pushing to get a spider cam. That’s something we’re working on at the moment. That would be fantastic.”
Knight continues that the spec for the women’s final is all about creating a broadcast that is as close as possible to what viewers expect to see of a men’s game. “The spec previously has been quite small, so we’re trying to push it so that it compares side by side to what the men’s final would look like, obviously with some restrictions,” she notes.
Compared to the previous Women’s FA Cup final, Knights says, “I believe we’re putting more into it just to try and elevate it so that we give it a Channel 4 shine, but also just give it the respect it deserves as a Cup Final at Wembley”.
She adds: “It’s an exciting match and we want to make sure that the people at home get that FA Cup Wembley experience. I feel like the spec we’re giving should absolutely achieve that.”
The production is also aiming to get cameras on the coaches as the teams arrive at the stadium and there should also be up to four tunnel cameras, “to make sure we get [the players] in the dressing rooms and walking to the pitch, and just to really build it up to show [viewers] what an amazing event it is, to really sell the sport,” says Knight.
Match director’s vision
On what Knight as match director intends to bring to viewers at home on the big day, she says it is all about the atmosphere. She comments: “For me, as a woman who loves women’s sport, the FA Cup final has always been the epitome of competition. I absolutely love the atmosphere. I love the idea of Wembley being as full as it can be, with young Brighton fans who’ve obviously never been there before.
“The scenes at the semi-final were amazing. There were tears everywhere, they really go for it. They dress up. The colour was amazing. Flags were everywhere. I think all we want to do is literally bottle that and throw it to the audience at home. The football’s obviously super important, but for me, it’s about having the little girls sitting at home thinking about starting to play football.
“So just making sure we capture that editorially correct during the match, but also that we capture that atmosphere and give them what it means to arrive at Wembley, with the cameras on the bus and the walk down the tunnel.”
Knight adds: “Women’s football is so up and coming now that the international team especially have been so successful, that we just want to keep building on that and make sure that more young girls play football and sign up and want to be the next Jill Scott.”
Adds Lucy Barber, programme editor at FilmNova: “Gemma is at the top of her game and we are so lucky to have her direct because of the vision she brings.”
Lucy Cutler, creative director at FilmNova, comments: “When we pitched for this gig last year to Channel 4, we pitched an all-female top line production team and we’ve absolutely delivered that. Our director Gemma Knight and programme editor Lucy Barber are at the top of their game, and Alison [Lombardi, FilmNova head of production] and I as execs have been very proud to work alongside them.”
Collaborative process
Knight says FilmNova and Channel 4 have been working with TNT Sports to ensure all games are as innovative as possible.
Knight says: “We’ve been working very closely with TNT, which has been really nice to share some facilities and also compliment our camera plans, working together to enhance it so that we’re bringing as much to each game as we can.”
Knight comments on how Channel 4’s production team is working with TNT Sports’. “We work on similar numbers camera-wise. For our matches [as host broadcaster] we are on site, and we also do the pres as well, but TNT will come on site with their add-ons and we have shared facilities, so we might use their steadi cam to compliment the coverage and have two steadi cameras rather than just one. Also we would then share our camera feeds with them to compliment their footage as well. So we’ve worked really well as a collaborative team to try and push the coverage a little bit more, which has been really nice.”
Knight notes on FilmNova and Channel 4 that, “the entire team is so collaborative”. She adds: “The support we’ve had from Channel 4 to be a little bit more daring or to do things just slightly differently around the football has been amazing. The support we’ve had from FilmNova and the people they’ve put in place in every position has been strategic and purposeful, but also it’s such a collaborative team. Everybody really wants to be there and be a part of it, which is really unique.
“And while for me, it’s always about the right person in the right position, we do have a really big female presence on the team, including female camera operators, and EVS operators. It is important to have that diversity because it just brings such a fresh, hungry kind of passion to what we’re doing. So it’s just been so nice to have that support from everybody and a really positive place to work to deliver what I think are really fun shows, that also take the football seriously.”
