Australian rules football in Queensland

Australian rules football in Queensland (typically referred to as "AFL", or less frequently "Australian Football", "Aussie Rules" or "Australian Rules") was the first official football code played in 1866. The Colony of Queensland was the second after Victoria to adopt Australian rules football, just days after the rules were widely published. For two decades it was the most popular football code, however a strong desire for representative football success saw Queenslanders favour British football variants for more than a century. As a result, Queensland is one of the two states to the east of the Australian cultural divide described as the Barassi Line. 120 years later in 1986 Queensland was the first state awarded a licence to have a club, the Brisbane Bears, in the national (AFL) competition, also its first privately owned club. However the Gold Coast based Bears had a detrimental effect until the 1993 redevelopment of the Brisbane Cricket Ground (Gabba). In contrast the Bears transformation into a Brisbane and traditional membership based club resulted in enormous growth, and a tripling of average AFL attendances by 1996.

Queensland has two fully professional teams competing in the AFL: the Brisbane Lions (1996) and Gold Coast Suns (2009). These two teams compete against each other in the QClash. Combined average AFL club membership, television audience and attendance, while growing, is the smallest of any state

Participation has surged since the 1990s particularly in South East Queensland and the Cairns Region. Growth in player numbers can be directly correlated to the Brisbane Lions threepeat AFL premiership era. The Lions 3 Grand Final appearances in the national women's competition (AFLW) from its inaugural season in 2017 and 2021 premiership helped further fuel female participation despite a lack of success from the Lions and Suns senior men's teams. Ausplay puts its participation in player numbers third behind soccer, rugby league. In 2018 for the first time since the 1890s it surpassed rugby union, however since 2019 the player base declined in contrast to increased numbers for all other football codes. Nevertheless, an increasing number of players have found pathways to the elite professional national level. As at 2020 more than 100 males and almost 50 females had played at the sport's highest level (AFL/AFLW), however only a dozen have played more than 200 games.

Queensland hosted the inaugural AFLW Grand Final in 2017 and was the second state in history to host the AFL Grand Final (in 2020). AFL Premiership matches are now regularly played in Brisbane, the Gold Coast and Cairns. The AFL began matches in Townsville along with AFLW matches in Moreton Bay, Mackay in the 2010s and the Sunshine Coast and Ipswich in the 2020s.

The state team, known as the "Maroons" debuted in 1884 against New South Wales and has been competitive against that state and the Australian Capital Territory however played their last senior match in 1988. The side's poor record contributed to the popularity of representative football in other codes, particularly the Queensland Reds (union) and later the Queensland Maroons (league). Despite its historical record, the team won Section B national titles in 1974 and 1979. Zane Taylor holds the record for the number of representative caps for Queensland. The underage team has been more successful with 4 Division 2 titles at the National Championships, the most recent in 2015. The AFL wound up Queensland's senior representation in 1993 and underage titles in 2019 in favour of club academies.

The state has produced many great players. Erwin Dornau became the first born and raised Queenslander in the AFL in 1948. Jason Dunstall was the first Queenslander to be inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame in 2002 and holds the AFL record of most goals for a Queenslander with 1254, the third highest tally in league history. Dunstall also holds the record AFL games for a player born and raised in the state (269). The state's 3 AFL Brownlow medallists include: Michael Voss, Jason Akermanis and Simon Black while these players were not both born and raised in the state all three are nonetheless multi-premiership players and Australian Football Hall of Famers. In the AFLW, the first Queensland born and raised player to win the league best and fairest is Ally Anderson (second Queenslander after Emily Bates) and shares the record for most games while Tayla Harris has the most goals.