Women's transfer record history: List of the most expensive players in women's football

Chelsea have often been big spenders in the women's game but in January 2026, they were the team receiving a bumper fee for a player instead when they sold France international Oriane Jean-Francois to Aston Villa for a fee of £450,000 ($607,000). It represented a club-record sale for the Blues.

Jean-Francois was signed by fellow Frenchwoman Sonia Bompastor when the former Lyon boss took charge of Chelsea ahead of the 2024-25 season. However, the 24-year-old struggled to nail down a place in the Blues starting line-up, especially after they paid big to bring Keira Walsh back to England in January 2025, and moved onto a new chapter in her career after 18 months in London.

The true value of transfers in the NWSL, the top flight of U.S. women's soccer, have not always been easy to identify as many deals have not just involved clubs swapping players for cash, but also including other players, draft picks and more in those intra-league trades. However, the abolition of the NWSL draft in 2024 means more deals are just including straight cash now, making them much easier to place in a list like this.

Emily Sams' transfer from the Orlando Pride to Angel City is one of those such deals, one which took place in January 2026. It saw the Pride receive $650,000 (£472,000) for the United States international, who debuted for her country in October 2024. Sams enjoyed incredible success in Orlando, with the team that made her the third overall pick of the 2023 NWSL Draft. Making 66 appearances across three seasons, the 26-year-old was named NWSL Defender of the Year in 2024, having helped the Pride win both the Shield and the Championship.

Now, Sams will hope for more success over on the west coast, after a bumper move to an ambitious Angel City project.

Going into the January transfer window of 2026, the feeling was that Manchester United had to be aggressive. Competing on four fronts with a much thinner squad that their domestic and European rivals, the Red Devils needed to recruit and recruit well in order to strengthen a team that had performed admirably in the first half of the season, particularly given their numerical limitations.

After securing the signatures of Hanna Lundkvist and Lea Schuller before the New Year, United then went big a few weeks later when they paid a club-record fee for Ellen Wangerheim. It was a big blow for Hammarby, who had already lost Anna Josendal, Smilla Holmberg and Julie Blakstad earlier in the month. However, the Swedish club were well compensated as United forked out £560,000 ($750,000) for a player in the final year of her contract, but one who, aged 21, scored 17 goals and provided seven assists in 25 Damallsvenskan games in 2025.

Barbra Banda had been lighting up the international stage for several years before her move to the Orlando Pride in 2024, but her club exploits were being conducted somewhat out of the spotlight, in the Chinese Women's Super League with Shanghai Shengli. That all ended when the Pride paid a huge $740,000 (£582,000) fee to bring her to the U.S. and thrust her talent back into the limelight on a regular basis. Banda's first season in Orlando was certainly worth the money, as her 17 goals in 26 outings helped deliver the club's first NWSL Championship.

Brazil star Ludmila was part of what could become the second-most lucrative intra-league trade in NWSL history at the start of 2026, when she moved from the Chicago Stars to the San Diego Wave for an initial fee of $800,000 (£582,000).

Aged 31, the forward is a well-known figure in the women's game, having enjoyed a particularly brilliant stint at Atletico Madrid from 2017 to 2024, one in which she scored 59 goals in 137 league games. Those performances persuaded Chicago to sign her to a three-year deal midway through the 2024 campaign.

However, she would only stick around for a season and a half, before San Diego made their move with a deal that could rise to a value of $1,000,000 (£727,000).

Leading the Women's Super League title race by a significant margin, Manchester City went into the 2026 January transfer window looking to strengthen a side that was already in a brilliant position, and that they did by adding a world-class midfielder to the squad in Sam Coffey.

Having established herself as one of the best No.6s in the game with both the Portland Thorns and the USWNT, it was no surprise that Coffey cost City a club-record fee, that of £650,000 ($875,000). It will be worth it immediately if she can help the team get over the line and win a first WSL title in 10 years.

It was just a few weeks prior to Banda's move to Orlando when Racheal Kundananji, her Zambia team-mate, became the most expensive women's footballer in the world when she joined another NWSL club, Bay FC. The expansion side made a statement when they paid $862,000 (£685,000) to bring her to California from Madrid CFF, with whom she scored 33 goals in 43 league games.

Kundananji hasn't quite hit those heights in the U.S. yet, but Bay FC in general are still to make a real mark on the NWSL since coming into the league back in 2024.

Walsh returned to England in January 2025, when Chelsea completed a sensational deadline day swoop for the midfielder. While the initial fee was reported at around £460,000 ($572,000), add-ons and bonuses meant to was likely to rise. By the end of the 2024-25 season, Spanish media reported that it had done exactly that, with the Blues ultimately paying €850,000 (£714,000/$884,000) for one of the best holding midfielders on the planet.

After just one season in the NWSL, Tarciane became the second most expensive player of all-time when she was signed by Lyon in February 2025. L'Equipe reported that the fee for the 21-year-old was around $960,000 (£762,000), a record for the French women's top-flight and a number that would have made her the world record holder had it been a deal that went through just a few weeks earlier.

But that world-record instead went to Naomi Girma, who was signed by Chelsea in January 2025 for £883,000, a fee that converts to $1,100,000 and thus makes her the first million dollar player in the women's game. Despite being just 24 years old, Girma is already widely considered one of the best centre-backs in the entire world, if not the best. It's a reputation she carved out in her first three seasons in the NWSL with the San Diego Wave and certainly cemented with her performances for the U.S. at the 2024 Olympic Games, at which she and her team won gold.

The most lucrative transfer ever between two NWSL clubs came midway through 2025, when Gotham paid $1,250,000 (£909,000) for Jaedyn Shaw. After coming into the league midway through the 2022 campaign, aged just 17, Shaw immediately grabbed the attention, becoming the youngest player to score on their competition debut when she netted for the San Diego Wave against Chicago. Her star would continue to shine brightly, too, particularly in the 2023 season as the Wave won the NWSL Shield.

She wouldn't stay on the west coast, though. In January 2025, Shaw moved to the North Carolina Courage in one of the NWSL's most valuable trades to date, but that was blown out of the water later that same year when Gotham paid a league-record fee to bring her in. A few months after, Shaw was celebrating the first NWSL Championship triumph of her career, starring in the final game of the season in victory over the Washington Spirit.

Girma held the word-record for a women's football transfer fee six months, until Arsenal made Olivia Smith the first million pound player in July 2025. The Gunners fell victim to the 20-year-old's magic in the FA Cup quarter-finals earlier in the year, as she inspired Liverpool to an unlikely victory, so they were under no illusions when it came to her talent, so much so that they were willing to pay a fee never seen before in the women's game to secure her services.

There was a lot of different reporting about the fee Chelsea paid for Alyssa Thompson on WSL deadline day in the summer of 2025. Initially, the Athletic said it fell just short of the £1 million mark, before both the Telegraph and the Guardian suggested otherwise. The latter pair understood the deal to be a club-record for Chelsea, surpassing the fee paid for Girma, and said it could rise to become a world-record, though it appeared to be short of what the Orlando Pride paid for Lizbeth Ovalle to start.

Smith's move to Arsenal held the world-record for a women's transfer for little over a month, before the Orlando Pride paid an even greater fee to secure the services of Mexico sensation Ovalle in August 2025. The 25-year-old had previously been linked with every top club in Europe - with all of Barcelona, Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Real Madrid and Wolfsburg interested after her outstanding exploits with Tigres. However, the next chapter of her career will instead take place in the U.S, after she signed for the reigning NWSL champions for a world-record fee of $1.5m (£1.1m).

A new women's transfer record was set on WSL deadline day in the summer of 2025 as London City Lionesses paid €1.65m (£1.43m/$1.93m) to bring Paris Saint-Germain captain Grace Geyoro to the club ahead of their top-flight debut. London City are backed by the billions of Michele Kang, who also owns PSG's bitter rivals Lyon, and the club threw that money around plenty in preparation for their WSL bow.