What Is the Premier League Hall of Fame?

**TL;DR: **The Premier League Hall of Fame is an annual induction launched in March 2021 to honour players who have made a major contribution to the competition since its formation in 1992. The first inductees were Alan Shearer and Thierry Henry. Each year, a panel and a public vote add a small group of new inductees, and to be eligible a player must be retired from professional football.

If you have followed the Premier League long enough to remember the actual names of Norwich City's 1992 squad, you have probably watched the league build up something it never used to have - a sense of formal history. The Hall of Fame is the most visible part of that effort.

How it started

The Premier League launched its Hall of Fame on 19 March 2021, almost 30 years after the league itself began in August 1992. The first two inductees were Alan Shearer (the league's all-time top scorer with 260 goals) and Thierry Henry (Arsenal's record goal-scorer and twice a league champion).

After those two opening picks, the league added six more in the inaugural year: Eric Cantona, Roy Keane, Frank Lampard, Dennis Bergkamp, Steven Gerrard and David Beckham. That was a deliberate move to anchor the institution with names everyone agreed on before getting into trickier debates.

How players get inducted

Eligibility is straightforward. You must be retired from professional football. You must have played in the Premier League. You must have made a significant impact on the competition. The Premier League runs both a panel decision and a public vote each year, with the public chipping in on a shortlist provided by the league.

• Player must be retired from professional football
• Player must have played in the Premier League at some point since 1992
• Inductees are decided by a combination of public voting and a panel
• Roughly six new inductees are added per year
• There is no fixed cap, but the bar stays deliberately high

If you want a sense of how much the league has changed during the careers of its Hall of Famers, our piece on how the Premier League has changed since 1992 lays out the timeline.

Who is in it

The list grows every year, but the most-cited names so far include Shearer, Henry, Cantona, Keane, Lampard, Bergkamp, Gerrard, Beckham, Wayne Rooney, Vincent Kompany, Patrick Vieira, Sergio Aguero, Tony Adams, Petr Cech and Peter Schmeichel. Most clubs with more than a decade of top-flight history have at least one representative.