Feature

Football balls run from Pee Wee (ages 6-9) up to full-size Official (age 14+), while soccer balls step from size 3 to size 4 to size 5 as kids get older.

Cora Maddox · August 2, 2026

Football balls move through four age-based sizes: Pee Wee (ages 6-9), Junior (9-12), Intermediate/Youth (12-14), and full-size Official (14 and up). Soccer uses three sizes instead — size 3 through age 8, size 4 from age 10 to 12, and size 5 from age 13 through adult play. Both scales come straight from each sport’s own rulebook or manufacturer chart, not from school grade level.

Sort and filter. Switch between football and soccer, then click any column header to re-sort the full chart below.

The Full Chart

Sport

Ball Size By Age

Band width shows the age range each ball size covers, per governing-body rules; darker teal marks the official/regulation adult size. Small numbers on the soccer bands are that league's own age-and-under bracket from the table below; A = adult, no age limit.

Sport ▼	Size / Model ▼	Age Range ▼	Grade Level ▼	Length (in) ▼	Long Circ. (in) ▼	Short Circ. (in) ▼	Weight (oz) ▼	Governing Bodies / Leagues ▼	Source Detail ▼
football	Pee Wee (Wilson size 6 / Nike "Peewee")	6-9	—	—	24	17.5	10	Pop Warner (Tiny-Mite/Mitey-Mite tackle divisions use Wilson model K2 per Rule 12 ball chart)	Age range confirmed independently by Wilson's and Nike's own size charts (both list 6-9); circumference/weight from FootballAdvantage.com's chart, which attributes sizing to Wilson
football	Junior (Wilson size 7 / Nike "Junior")	9-12	—	—	25	18.5	11	Pop Warner (Junior Peewee/Peewee tackle divisions use Wilson model TDJ per Rule 12 ball chart)	Same method as Pee Wee row; Wilson/Nike charts both list 9-12
football	Intermediate/Youth (Wilson size 8 / Nike "Youth")	12-14	—	—	26.25	19.25	12.5	Pop Warner (Junior Varsity/Varsity/Bantam tackle divisions use Wilson model TDY per Rule 12 ball chart)	Same method as Pee Wee row; Wilson/Nike charts both list 12-14. USA Football's published youth-play guidance covers contact/practice rules but does not publish its own ball-size chart
football	Official/Adult (size 9)	14+ (9th grade and up)	—	11-11.25	28-28.5	21-21.25	14-15	NFL Rule 2 Sec.1 (exact dimensions, must be a Wilson ball); NFHS Rule 1 Sec.3 Art.1 (high school, identical weight/pressure, 9th grade+ balls require the NFHS Authenticating Mark); NCAA Rule 1 Sec.3 Art.1 (college, identical weight/pressure)	Length/circumference figures are transcribed verbatim from the NFL rulebook PDF (Rule 2, p.9: "long axis, 11 to 11¼ inches; long circumference, 28 to 28½ inches; short circumference, 21 to 21¼ inches; weight, 14 to 15 ounces"). NFHS and NCAA rulebooks independently confirm the same 14-15 oz weight and 12½-13½ psi inflation pressure but specify shape via a diagram (Figure 1-3-1 / accompanying diagram) rather than numeric text, so their exact length/circumference could not be independently confirmed from rulebook text
soccer	Size 3	6 & under	—	—	—	23-24	11-12	US Youth Soccer (Rule 303 Sec.1, age bracket "6 years of age and under"); AYSO (Schoolyard Soccer, 6U division)	US Youth Soccer Players and Playing Rules Policy PDF, Rule 303, official age/size/circumference/weight table
soccer	Size 3	8 & under	—	—	—	23-24	11-12	US Youth Soccer (Rule 303 Sec.1, "8 years of age and under"); AYSO (Schoolyard Soccer, 8U division)	Same USYS Rule 303 table
soccer	Size 4	10 & under	—	—	—	25-26	11-13	US Youth Soccer (Rule 303 Sec.1, "10 years of age and under"); AYSO (Standard, 10U division)	Same USYS Rule 303 table
soccer	Size 4	11 & under	—	—	—	25-26	11-13	US Youth Soccer (Rule 303 Sec.1, "11 years of age and under")	Same USYS Rule 303 table
soccer	Size 4	12 & under	—	—	—	25-26	11-13	US Youth Soccer (Rule 303 Sec.1, "12 years of age and under"); AYSO (Standard, 12U division)	Same USYS Rule 303 table
soccer	Size 5	13 & under	—	—	—	27-28	14-16	US Youth Soccer (Rule 303 Sec.1, "13 years of age and under")	Same USYS Rule 303 table
soccer	Size 5	14 & under	—	—	—	27-28	14-16	US Youth Soccer (Rule 303 Sec.1, "14 years of age and under"); AYSO (Standard, 14U division)	Same USYS Rule 303 table
soccer	Size 5	15 & under	—	—	—	27-28	14-16	US Youth Soccer (Rule 303 Sec.1, "15 years of age and under")	Same USYS Rule 303 table
soccer	Size 5	16 & under	—	—	—	27-28	14-16	US Youth Soccer (Rule 303 Sec.1, "16 years of age and under"); AYSO (Standard, 16U division)	Same USYS Rule 303 table
soccer	Size 5	17 & under	—	—	—	27-28	14-16	US Youth Soccer (Rule 303 Sec.1, "17 years of age and under")	Same USYS Rule 303 table
soccer	Size 5	18 & under	—	—	—	27-28	14-16	US Youth Soccer (Rule 303 Sec.1, "18 years of age and under"); AYSO (Standard, 18U division)	Same USYS Rule 303 table
soccer	Size 5	19 & under	—	—	—	27-28	14-16	US Youth Soccer (Rule 303 Sec.1, "19 years of age and under")	Same USYS Rule 303 table
soccer	Size 5	Adult/senior (no age limit)	—	—	—	27-28 (68-70cm)	14-16 (410-450g)	IFAB Laws of the Game, Law 2 "The Ball" — applies to all FIFA/confederation/national-association-sanctioned competitive play	IFAB's own Law 2 text gives metric-primary figures with inch/ounce equivalents in parentheses: circumference "68 cm (27 ins) and 70 cm (28 ins)", weight "410 g (14 oz) and 450 g (16 oz)"

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Sources

2026 NFL Rulebook (PDF) — Rule 2, The BallprimaryNFL Football Operations — Page 9: exact ball dimensions, weight, inflation pressure
2021 NFHS Football Rules Book (PDF) — Rule 1, Section 3, Game EquipmentprimaryNational Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) — Pages 15-17: ball weight (14-15 oz), inflation (12.5-13.5 psi), measurement method; exact length/circumference given only via unextracted diagram (Figure 1-3-1)
2025 NCAA Football Rule Book (PDF) — Rule 1, Section 3, The BallprimaryNCAA (rulebook text hosted by TASO, Texas Association of Sports Officials) — Pages 24-25: ball weight (14-15 oz), inflation (12.5-13.5 psi); exact length/circumference given only via unextracted diagram
Pop Warner 2025-2026 Rule Book (PDF) — Rule 12: Game Ball; Part II Sec.5 Level of PlayprimaryPop Warner Little Scholars, Inc. — Page 37: table mapping age/skill division (Tiny-Mite through Varsity) to Wilson/Nike/Rawlings/Spalding ball model numbers; page 15: age-based division definitions (6u-14u)
US Youth Soccer Players and Playing Rules Policy (PDF) — Rule 303, Length of Games, Overtime Periods, and Ball SpecificationsprimaryUS Youth Soccer Association (USYSA) — Pages 6-7: official table of ball size, circumference, and weight for every age bracket from 6U through 19U
Laws of the Game — Law 2: The BallprimaryInternational Football Association Board (IFAB), publisher of the FIFA Laws of the Game — Official size-5 circumference (68-70cm/27-28in) and weight (410-450g/14-16oz) for senior competitive play; page does not itself break out sizes 3/4 by age
Size of Ball and Field by Age DivisionprimaryAmerican Youth Soccer Organization (AYSO) — Confirms AYSO's own division-to-ball-size mapping (Schoolyard 6U/8U = size 3; Standard 10U/12U = size 4; Standard 14U/16U/18U = size 5)
Youth Football Sizes: The Correct Youth Football Sizes for Every Age GroupsecondaryFootballAdvantage.com — Retailer/coaching blog; source for youth (Pee Wee/Junior/Intermediate) circumference and weight figures, attributed to Wilson in the article
Wilson Football Size ChartsecondarySCHEELS (retailer, reproducing Wilson's chart) — Confirms Wilson's own age-range labels: Pee Wee 6-9, Junior 9-12, Youth 12-14, Official 14+
Nike Football Size ChartsecondarySCHEELS (retailer, reproducing Nike's chart) — Confirms Nike's own age-range labels, matching Wilson's: Pee Wee 6-9, Junior 9-12, Youth 12-14, Official 14+

Method

WebSearch budget was exhausted after 4 queries, so all further discovery used the DuckDuckGo HTML endpoint (https://html.duckduckgo.com/html/?q=...) via WebFetch, per fallback instructions. Several primary sites 403'd WebFetch directly (wilson.com, popwarner.com age-division page, dickssportinggoods.com, opensourcesports.io); the r.jina.ai reader proxy was used as a fallback for those (wilson.com and popwarner.com succeeded via jina; the rest were dropped from sources since no usable claim was recovered). WebFetch's built-in PDF text extraction failed on several image-heavy rulebook PDFs (returned only binary/stream noise), and the Read tool's PDF page-rendering fallback was unavailable (pdftoppm/poppler-utils not installed on this box). Rulebook PDFs (NFL, NFHS, NCAA, Pop Warner, US Youth Soccer) were instead downloaded directly with curl and their text extracted locally with the Python pypdf library (v6.14.2, already installed), then grepped for ball/circumference/weight keywords to locate the relevant rule pages.

Gaps

US Club Soccer: found only their player age-group registration page, not a distinct published ball-size-by-age policy; could not confirm whether they publish their own chart or simply defer to FIFA/IFAB sizing, so no US Club Soccer citation appears in the table. USA Football: their published youth-play PDF covers contact/practice-time guidelines only and contains no ball-size chart — we couldn't find one. Manufacturer-published exact length (long-axis) and precise circumference figures for the three youth football tiers (Pee Wee/Junior/Intermediate) beyond the secondary FootballAdvantage.com chart — Wilson's, Rawlings', and Spalding's own product-spec pages either 403'd or returned only shipping-box dimensions, not ball dimensions, so those cells are sourced to one secondary retailer/blog site rather than a manufacturer spec sheet directly. Exact NFHS/NCAA numeric length and circumference (their rulebooks specify shape via a diagram rather than text, so only weight and inflation pressure could be confirmed from those two rulebooks in text form). No source ties football or soccer ball sizing to school grade level rather than age, so that column is dash throughout.