Leyton Orient Football Club is a professional football club based in Leyton, Greater London, England, that compete in EFL League One, the third tier of English football, following promotion from EFL League Two. They are the second oldest football club in London to play at a professional level, and are known to their fans by their nickname “the O’s”. The club’s home colours are all red. They have played home matches at Brisbane Road since 1937, having previously played at Millfields and Lea Bridge Road.
Founded in 1881 as the Glyn Cricket Club, they began playing football as Orient in 1888 and joined the London League in 1896 after success in the Clapton & District League. The club adopted the name Clapton Orient two years later and were elected into the Football League in 1905. Relegated out of the Second Division in 1929, the club adopted the name Leyton Orient after World War II. They won the Third Division South title in 1955–56 and secured promotion out of the Second Division in 1961–62, though were relegated out of the First Division after just one season, and suffered a further relegation in 1966. That November the club’s name reverted to Orient F.C. and they went on to win the Third Division under the stewardship of Jimmy Bloomfield in 1969–70. Orient spent the 1970s playing in the second tier, winning two London Challenge Cups and reaching the 1977 Anglo-Scottish Cup final and 1977–78 FA Cup semi-finals, before being relegated in 1982 and again in 1985.
In 1987 the club reverted to being Leyton Orient again. They won promotion out of the Fourth Division via the play-offs in 1988–89, though were relegated again in 1995. Barry Hearn became chairman in 1995 after the club was put on sale for £5 by then-chairman Tony Wood, a period covered by the television documentary Orient: Club for a Fiver (made by production company Open Media for Channel 4 and listed in Forbes magazine in 2020 as one of its “Top Five Sports Documentaries”).
Orient gained promotion out of League Two with Martin Ling in 2005–06, before Hearn sold the club to Italian businessman Francesco Becchetti, who presided over two relegations in three years under 11 managers, taking the club out of the football league for the first time in 112 years. Nigel Travis took over running the club in 2017 and appointed Justin Edinburgh as manager, and under this stable leadership the club went on to reach the 2019 FA Trophy final and win promotion back into the Football League as champions of the National League in 2018–19. Under manager Richie Wellens, the club was crowned champions of EFL League Two in the 2022-23 League Two campaign, meaning that they will be playing in EFL League One for the 2023–24 season.