Craven Cottage

Craven Cottage holds 27,000 — but Fulham publish that figure with two qualifications attached, and both matter. It is the capacity during the Riverside Stand redevelopment, and it includes 72 seats inside the Cottage pavilion itself. Away supporters go in the Putney End, where the allocation is capped at 2,700.

Craven Cottage capacity — 27,000, and why it has an expiry date

The club states it as “Capacity (during redevelopment of Riverside Stand): 27,000 (includes Cottage seating of 72)”. That is not a tidy number with a footnote; it is a number that only means anything with its qualifications carried along. Strip them and you have a figure that will be wrong the moment the Riverside Stand opens, and that quietly counts 72 seats most people would not guess exist.

Two other Fulham figures circulate and neither contradicts this one. 25,700 appears on the club's own history page as the level reached after the 2004 all-seater rebuild — but that page still says the club “has gained approval to redevelop the Riverside Stand”, in the future tense, so it describes the ground before this project rather than a rival measurement of the ground today. 30,000 is the stated post-completion design figure. One is an outdated page and the other is a future number. Neither is a disagreement, and presenting them as one would manufacture a conflict out of a timeline.

Where do away fans sit at Craven Cottage?

Visiting supporters are in the Putney End, and unusually they share it: Fulham describe the stand as housing home and away fans together, with the away area capped at 2,700 tickets. Most grounds hand a visiting club a whole stand or a whole tier. Here the segregation line runs through a single 6,230-seat stand, which is why the cap exists as a published number at all.

Wheelchair users supporting the visiting team are in Block P6. That is worth stating precisely, because the neighbouring accessible seating in Blocks P2 and P3 is for home supporters — three blocks in one stand, two allegiances, and a single letter between them. The corner of the stand nearest the players' entrance and the Cottage pavilion is known as Cottage Corner. Rows A to E of the Putney End are uncovered, which is a detail worth having in London in February.

The four stands, and the 7,273 seats nobody accounts for

Fulham publish per-stand capacities, which almost no English club does. Three of the four stands have a stated figure and a block range; the fourth is a building site.

Craven Cottage stands, from the club's Craven Cottage FAQ

Stand	Capacity	Supporters	Blocks
Hammersmith End	7,568	Home only	H1, H3–H6
Putney End	6,230	Home and away	P1–P6
Johnny Haynes Stand	5,929	Home only	A–K (upper), AL–KL (lower)
Riverside Stand	Not published	Under redevelopment	—

The three published stands sum to 19,727, which leaves 7,273 of the 27,000 unaccounted for. The obvious move is to call that the Riverside Stand's current capacity. Do not: the club does not say so, and a stand mid-rebuild is exactly the place where hospitality, media positions and temporary closures accumulate. The honest statement is that Fulham publish three stand capacities and a total, and that the arithmetic between them is theirs to explain, not ours to invent.

The Johnny Haynes Stand — listed, and partially obstructed

The Johnny Haynes Stand is the reason Craven Cottage is not interchangeable with any other ground of its size. It was designed by Archibald Leitch, the Scottish engineer whose work shaped British football grounds for a generation, and it is a Grade II listed building protected by English Heritage. Fulham state plainly what that costs a spectator: because of the stand's age, the sightline from a number of seats is partially obstructed by roof-supporting columns.

That is an unusual thing for a club to publish about its own tickets, and it is the single most useful sentence on the FAQ. A listed stand cannot be reconfigured to remove the columns — the protection is the point — so the obstruction is permanent in a way that a temporary capacity is not. The upper tier has wooden seating and houses the press box; the lower tier, Blocks AL to KL, was a standing paddock before it was converted to seats. Blocks A, AL, K and KL are the designated family area.

Sources and verification