The Essendon Football Club, nicknamed the Bombers, is a professional Australian rules football club which has its training and administration base in the northern Melbourne suburb of Tullamarine, Victoria.

The club plays in the Australian Football League (AFL), the game’s premier competition. The club was formed by the McCracken family in their Ascot Vale home Ailsa, and while the exact date is unknown, it is generally accepted to have been in 1872. The club’s first recorded game took place on 7 June 1873 against a Carlton Second 20.

From 1878 until 1896, the club played in the Victorian Football Association then joined seven other clubs in October 1896 to form the breakaway Victorian Football League (later changed to AFL in 1990). Headquartered at the Essendon Recreation Ground, known as Windy Hill, from 1922 to 2013, the club moved to The Hangar in near Tullamarine in late 2013 on land owned the Melbourne Airport.

The club currently plays its home games at either Docklands Stadium or the Melbourne Cricket Ground.