Chelsea vs Hull City Timeline & H2H Stats

Chelsea were nine days into their existence as a Football League club when they first met Hull City. It was in the September of 1905, with both sides then members of the Second Division. It is one of the earliest fixtures in Chelsea’s history, predating the club’s first major trophy by exactly half a century and belonging to an era when the Blues were themselves the newcomers trying to establish a place in the game.

The fixture moved between divisions for much of the twentieth century as both clubs experienced their own ups and downs. Then they began to drift apart, until Hull’s promotion into the Premier League in 2008 brought the Tigers into contact with a transformed Chelsea, by then reshaped into one of European football’s dominant forces by the takeover of the club by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich.

A Fixture Rooted in the Second Division

For the first two decades of their acquaintance, Chelsea and Hull met almost exclusively in the Second Division, with both clubs chasing the promotion that would establish them amongst the country’s bigger names. Chelsea managed it first, reaching the First Division in 1907, whilst Hull spent the whole of the 20th century without ever playing top-flight football. That was a wait that didn’t end until the club’s Premier League promotion in 2008, more than a century after the fixture first began.

A One-Sided Cup Rivalry

Whatever has happened in the league, the FA Cup has been a stronghold for Chelsea against Hull City, the two sides meeting in the competition repeatedly since a first tie in the January of 1909 without Hull ever progressing at Chelsea’s expense. That record has held strong through every era of the modern game, from a comfortable win under Antonio Conte in 2018 to a tighter victory under Frank Lampard two years later, then again in the February of 2026, when Pedro Neto scored a hat-trick either side of a goal from Estêvão as Chelsea won comfortably at the MKM Stadium.

Different Grounds, Different Worlds

Hull have played this fixture from three different home grounds across the years, from Boothferry Park, their home from 1946 to 2002, to the stadium now known as the MKM Stadium on the other side of the city. Chelsea, by contrast, have called Stamford Bridge home for the entire history of the fixture, which is a rare piece of continuity in a rivalry otherwise defined by how differently the two clubs’ fortunes have unfolded.

Chelsea’s Full Match History Against Hull City