Nottingham Forest rivals are not a simple list. Ask a supporter to name the club’s biggest rival and you will not get a single answer – you will get a debate. Geography, history and one very large personality have left the Reds with three or four genuine feuds rather than one, and which of them matters most tends to depend on how old you are and which decade shaped your football.
Here is the full picture: who Nottingham Forest’s rivals are, where each rivalry came from, and why some of them burn hotter than others.
Derby County: the East Midlands derby
This is the one. Derby County, 15 miles down the A52, are the fixture that empties the pubs and fills the away end, and the rivalry is unusual because it was not really born of geography alone. It was forged by a man.
Brian Clough managed Derby from 1967 to 1973 and took them from the Second Division to the First Division title in 1972. He then walked out, and after a famously brief and unhappy spell at Leeds United, arrived at the City Ground in January 1975. What followed – a First Division title in 1978 and back-to-back European Cups in 1979 and 1980 – meant the same manager had delivered the greatest era in the history of both clubs, but had delivered it far more spectacularly to one of them. Derby have never entirely forgiven that, and Forest have never stopped enjoying it.
The stretch of the A52 between the two cities was officially renamed Brian Clough Way in 2005, and since 2007 the league meetings have been played for the Brian Clough Trophy. Both clubs claim him. Only one built two European Cups with him, as we set out in our full story of the Clough era.
The frustration for supporters of both sides is that the fixture has become rare. Forest’s promotion to the Premier League in 2022 and Derby’s simultaneous slide out of the Championship put the clubs in different divisions, and they have not shared one since. That absence has done nothing to cool the temperature; if anything, a generation of fans who have never seen it live want it more.
Notts County: the oldest derby in Nottingham
You can stand outside the City Ground and see Meadow Lane. The two grounds sit on opposite banks of the River Trent, roughly 300 yards apart, making Forest and Notts County the closest pair of professional clubs in England.
Notts County, founded in 1862, are the oldest professional football club in the world; Forest followed in 1865. That shared antiquity produced a derby with genuine heat for the best part of a century. There is even a nod to it in Italy: Juventus adopted their black-and-white stripes after a Notts County connection in 1903.
What has drained the modern edge is divergence. Forest have spent the last three decades between the Premier League and the Championship while Notts County dropped out of the Football League entirely in 2019 before winning promotion back in 2023. The clubs simply do not meet. For older supporters the Nottingham derby remains the real one; for anyone under 30, it is largely a story their dad tells.
Leicester City: the third East Midlands club
Leicester sit 25 miles south and complete the East Midlands triangle. The rivalry has historically been the coolest of Forest’s three regional feuds – a matter of local pride rather than open hostility – but it has warmed considerably in the Premier League era, largely because the two clubs have finally been meeting regularly and with something at stake.
Leicester’s 2016 title win and Forest’s long absence from the top flight created an awkward decade in which the argument was fairly one-sided. Forest’s return in 2022 and the Foxes’ subsequent yo-yo between divisions has levelled the conversation again. It is a rivalry defined by proximity and pecking order rather than by any single infamous incident.
Leeds United: 44 days that never went away
Leeds are not a local rival by any measure, but the bad blood is real and it is, again, Clough’s doing. His 44 days in charge at Elland Road in 1974 – after openly and repeatedly criticising the Don Revie side he had been hired to manage – became one of English football’s great pieces of folklore, later dramatised in The Damned United. Forest supporters have enjoyed that story for 50 years. Leeds supporters have not.
The fixture has picked up fresh needle in the current campaign. Leeds won 1-0 at the City Ground on the opening weekend of 2026/27 and then returned three days later to knock the Reds out of the Carabao Cup with a 2-0 win. Two visits, two defeats, no goals scored. That is the kind of week that keeps a rivalry topped up.
Nottingham Forest rivals ranked: who matters most?
By any measure that counts – intensity, history, the sheer volume of argument generated – it is Derby County. Notts County own the oldest claim and the shortest walk, Leicester have the most consistent recent relevance, and Leeds provide the most reliable modern grudge. But the East Midlands derby is the one that carries a trophy named after the manager both clubs wish they had kept.
It is also, at present, the one Forest supporters are least likely to see. With the Reds established back in the Premier League under Oliver Glasner – who took his side to Anfield for a 12.30pm kick-off this weekend, as reported by the Nottingham Post – and Derby rebuilding in the Championship, the gap is not closing quickly. Forest fans, on the whole, will take that trade.
For more on the club’s history, see our guides to every major trophy Forest have won and the City Ground.
