There might not be another Premier League club whose trophy cabinet requires quite as much explanation as Nottingham Forest’s. Forest have one English league championship. They have two European Cups. That wonderfully strange piece of football history tells you a lot about the club. Brian Clough and Peter Taylor took Forest from the Second Division to champions of England and then conquered Europe in consecutive seasons, winning the European Cup in 1979 and retaining it in 1980. Forest’s rise happened so quickly that it still sounds slightly fictional when condensed into a few sentences.
For decades, those European trophies represented an almost unreachable standard for the Forest teams that followed. The club eventually dropped out of the Premier League entirely, spent 23 years away from England’s top division and had to work its way back before finally returning in 2022. That’s why the last few seasons have felt different on Trentside. Forest qualified for Europe again after finishing seventh in 2024/25 and then reached the Europa League quarter-finals in 2025/26. The club that never stopped singing about being champions of Europe finally had European away days on the calendar again.
For supporters watching in 2026/27, Forest are back in the Premier League with another new chapter beginning under Oliver Glasner. And whether you’re watching from Nottingham or following the Reds while traveling abroad, knowing why a Forest match isn’t available is more useful than immediately reaching for a VPN.
The City Ground Makes More Sense From the Trent
You can understand plenty about Forest without ever visiting Nottingham, but the geography helps. The City Ground sits beside the River Trent, with Trent Bridge and the city’s sporting landscape surrounding it. Forest have played there since 1898, making it one of those English grounds where generations of the same families have been walking toward essentially the same destination on matchday.
The stadium also carries Forest’s history directly in its structure. Its largest stand bears Brian Clough’s name, an appropriate tribute considering what happened after he arrived in January 1975. With Peter Taylor later joining him, Forest earned promotion, won the First Division in 1977/78 and followed it by becoming European champions twice.
That history could easily make the modern Forest feel like an extended nostalgia exercise. It doesn’t, largely because the club has finally started creating significant memories that belong to supporters who weren’t alive for Clough’s greatest teams. European football returning to the City Ground was one of them.
Forest’s Return to Europe Meant More Than Qualification
When Forest finished seventh in 2024/25, they secured European football for the first time in roughly three decades. The following Europa League campaign meant supporters who had grown up hearing stories about continental Forest finally got European nights of their own.
The run carried Forest into the knockout rounds and eventually the quarter-finals. They eliminated Fenerbahçe, progressed against Midtjylland after a penalty shootout and then met Porto in the last eight. That doesn’t put the modern side alongside the teams that lifted European Cups. It doesn’t need to.
The important part is that Europe stopped being something Forest supporters could experience only through old footage, photographs and stories. A club whose identity had remained unusually connected to continental success was participating on that stage again.
That also helps explain Forest’s growing international audience. The club even brought back its International Reds membership for 2026/27, specifically aimed at overseas supporters and providing a limited ticket allocation for selected City Ground matches. Forest suddenly make for a much more interesting subject than they did during those long Championship years.
A New Forest Begins Under Oliver Glasner
The Forest story entering 2026/27 isn’t simply a continuation of last season. Oliver Glasner is now the head coach, taking charge during the summer after a turbulent 2025/26 that included multiple managerial changes. His first home match in charge came during preseason against Bayer Leverkusen, with Forest winning 2-1 at the City Ground.
There are familiar pieces still around him. Chris Wood has switched to the No. 9 shirt for the new campaign, while Igor Jesus has taken No. 11. Morgan Gibbs-White, Elliot Anderson, Murillo, Callum Hudson-Odoi and Dan Ndoye are among the players who give this Forest side an identity separate from the team that originally fought its way back into the Premier League.
There has been turnover as well. Taiwo Awoniyi’s move to Coventry City opened the No. 9 shirt for Wood, another reminder of how much Forest’s squad has evolved since those first tense seasons after promotion. Glasner therefore inherits something unusual: a club that has already completed the difficult transition from Championship promotion to Premier League survival and then into European competition, but still has plenty to prove about whether that progress can last.
Start With the Match, Not the Streaming App
For actually watching Forest, I think there’s a simpler way to organize this page than repeating another enormous list of broadcasters. Before kickoff, identify what Forest are playing and when they’re playing it. Premier League matches use the Premier League rights holder in your country. Domestic cup games can have a different broadcaster. If Forest qualify for European competition, UEFA rights become relevant. Once you know the competition, finding the correct streaming service becomes much easier.
The kickoff time matters too. Forest opened the 2026/27 Premier League season at home against Leeds United in a Saturday 3 p.m. slot. Their next league match, away at Liverpool, was selected for a 12:30 Saturday broadcast on TNT Sports in the UK. Those two matches demonstrate the problem nicely. They’re both Premier League fixtures involving Nottingham Forest, but their domestic UK television availability isn’t the same.
Why Some Forest Matches Aren’t Live on UK Television
The Leeds opener also provides a useful example of the English football blackout. The UK maintains a protected Saturday afternoon window in which Premier League matches aren’t normally broadcast live domestically. This isn’t a Nottingham restriction and it isn’t determined by how close you are to the City Ground. A supporter elsewhere in England faces the same protected window.
International Premier League broadcasters operate under different territorial agreements, so the same match can be televised legally in another country while unavailable live on domestic UK television. For readers who want the full explanation, I’d link Premier League blackouts and geo-restrictions to our main Premier League guide rather than repeating the entire system here. For this Forest page, remembering one distinction is enough: a UK television blackout isn’t the same thing as a streaming service detecting that you’ve traveled into another country.
When Traveling Creates the Problem
Now imagine the situation differently. You’re normally able to watch Forest through a streaming service at home, but you’re traveling internationally and the service tells you that its sports coverage isn’t available in your current region. That points toward a geo-restriction rather than the Saturday blackout.
Premier League broadcasting rights are divided geographically. When you cross from one country into another, you can also cross into a different broadcast territory. Streaming services can use information such as your IP address to estimate where your connection is coming from and determine what content should be available there. A VPN provides a method for changing the location associated with that connection. That’s the specific situation where we’d consider using one for Forest.
The Quick ExpressVPN Method
We recommend ExpressVPN for supporters who want a VPN option while traveling. Rather than turning this into another long technical setup, the process can be kept to three basic steps.
Connect first. Open ExpressVPN and choose the appropriate server location before launching the streaming service.
Open your normal service second. Sign in as you normally would and look for the Forest fixture.
Troubleshoot the match before the VPN. If Forest still aren’t appearing, confirm that you have the correct broadcaster for that competition and kickoff. Changing VPN servers won’t help if you’re looking for a cup match on a service that only has Premier League rights.
ExpressVPN doesn’t provide the sports subscription itself, and using a VPN isn’t a guarantee that any particular streaming platform will work. What it provides is a method for dealing with location-based access issues while traveling.
Affiliate Disclosure: VPNForSports may earn a commission if you purchase through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Forest and Derby Is a Rivalry Bigger Than the Current League Table
Some club pages need a section explaining why a particular rivalry matters. Forest supporters probably don’t need one explaining Derby County. The East Midlands rivalry is tied together by geography, history and one particularly unavoidable figure. Brian Clough won the league with Derby before eventually crossing the divide and building his extraordinary Forest side. The road connecting Nottingham and Derby now bears the Brian Clough Way, which is almost too perfect for a rivalry shaped so heavily by the same manager.
The fixture itself hasn’t been a regular Premier League event because the clubs have spent long periods in different divisions. That doesn’t make Derby irrelevant to Forest’s identity. It means one of Forest’s most meaningful opponents can disappear from the league schedule for years without disappearing from the conversation.
Leicester City adds another East Midlands relationship, while meetings with Liverpool carry a very different historical resonance. Liverpool were the dominant English side Forest had to overcome during their late-1970s rise, making those matches part of the story of how Clough’s Forest reached the top. Different opponents therefore tell different parts of the club’s history. Derby is local. Liverpool evokes the great Forest sides. The modern Premier League provides a completely new set of grudges and memorable afternoons.
The European Cups Aren’t the Only Forest History Worth Knowing
Clough naturally consumes most conversations about Forest history, but the club’s story didn’t begin in 1975. Nottingham Forest were founded in 1865, placing them among England’s oldest football clubs. Their red shirts also had an influence far beyond Nottingham: Arsenal adopted red after receiving kits from Forest members during the London club’s early history.
Forest won the FA Cup in 1898 and again in 1959, decades before Clough arrived. The club already had a substantial history before its most famous manager transformed what anyone thought Forest could achieve.
The Clough years then changed the scale completely. Forest won promotion in 1977, became champions of England the following season and then won back-to-back European Cups. Clough remained at the City Ground until 1993, managing more than a thousand Forest matches during an 18-year reign.
That period also included Viv Anderson, who emerged through Forest and became a key part of Clough’s team before making England history in 1978. Forest’s own retrospective describes Anderson as a pioneer whose career stretched from his local Nottingham roots onto the international stage.
There’s plenty of history here without trying to turn this page into a museum exhibit. The better reason to include it is that Forest’s modern story makes more sense once you understand the standard supporters inevitably compare it against.
The 2026/27 Schedule Has Some Proper City Ground Tests
Forest’s season starts with Leeds at home before immediately sending the Reds to Anfield to face Liverpool. Tottenham visit the City Ground in September, while Manchester City arrive in November and Chelsea come to Nottingham later that month.
The second half of the campaign includes Liverpool visiting the City Ground in April, followed by Sunderland at home and a May trip to Brighton. Forest’s final home match is against Ipswich Town on May 23 before the Premier League season concludes away at Coventry City on May 30.
Those dates aren’t worth memorizing months in advance because Premier League fixtures can move for television and competition scheduling. The league specifically advises supporters that dates and kickoff times are subject to change, and its digital calendar can automatically update when matches are rescheduled.
That’s another reason I wouldn’t build a Forest viewing routine around a particular Saturday time. Check the fixture during matchweek, identify the broadcaster where you are and then worry about streaming access.
Following Forest From Abroad Feels Different Now
Nottingham Forest have always had supporters outside Nottingham, but the club’s recent trajectory has given a new generation of international fans something to attach themselves to. They’ve watched Forest return to the Premier League, survive, climb the table and finally bring European football back to the City Ground. The club’s decision to continue its International Reds program in 2026/27 reflects that growing overseas audience rather than treating it as an afterthought.
For those supporters, the practical viewing advice doesn’t need to be complicated. Find the broadcaster that owns the competition where you live. Understand that England’s Saturday afternoon blackout is a domestic broadcast rule, not a Nottingham-specific restriction. If you’re traveling and your usual streaming service becomes unavailable because you’ve entered another region, a VPN such as ExpressVPN provides one method to try.
The rest is football. Forest’s greatest teams created a standard so improbable that two European Cups still sit beside one league championship in the record books. The current team doesn’t need to recreate Brian Clough’s Forest to matter. After decades away, simply seeing Nottingham Forest become a club with genuine ambitions beyond survival has already made this era worth following.
