2021 AFL Women's season

The 2021 AFL Women's season was the fifth season of the AFL Women's (AFLW) competition, the highest-level senior women's Australian rules football competition in Australia. The season featured 14 clubs and ran from 28 January to 17 April, comprising a nine-round home-and-away season followed by a three-week finals series featuring the top six clubs.

won the premiership, defeating by 18 points in the 2021 AFL Women's Grand Final. Adelaide won the minor premiership by finishing atop the home-and-away ladder with a 7–2 win–loss record. 's Kiara Bowers and 's Brianna Davey tied for the AFL Women's best and fairest award as the league's best and fairest players, and 's Darcy Vescio won their second AFL Women's leading goalkicker award as the league's leading goalkicker.

Format
The previous two AFLW seasons were formatted with the assistance of conferences, which split the league's clubs into two ranking tables. The AFL elected to remove the conferences for the 2021 season and revert to a single ladder. Under the terms of the existing contractual bargaining agreement between the players and the AFL, teams will play nine regular season matches, before a three-week finals series for the top six teams occurs. Owing to the fact clubs will not get the opportunity to play all of their opponents once, the AFL placed the teams together in a single 2020 ladder and then broke them up into brackets to attempt a fair fixture for the 2021 season.

The season was played during the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the season began, Australia had largely settled into a paradigm of most states maintaining zero COVID-19 cases outside of their international travel quarantine systems; this allowed football games to be played in front of crowds, usually with reduced capacity, and unhindered interstate travel was permitted without quarantine. However, the different state governments often responded quickly to small numbers or even single virus cases being discovered in the community; this meant border restrictions or quarantine periods were at times re-introduced at short notice, impacting interstate travel for games; and, in some cases, that city- or state-wide lockdowns could be imposed within the impacted states, precluding football activities altogether. The season's original nine-round fixture was discarded due to such restrictions after only one week, in favour of a floating fixture released around any restrictions in place at the time.

Home-and-away season
All starting times are local time.

Progression by round

 * Numbers highlighted in green indicates the team finished the round inside the top 6.
 * Numbers highlighted in blue indicates the team finished in first place for that round.
 * Numbers highlighted in red indicates the team finished in last place for that round.

League awards

 * The league best and fairest was jointly awarded to Kiara Bowers of and Brianna Davey of, who polled 15 votes each.
 * The leading goalkicker was awarded to Darcy Vescio of, who kicked 16 goals during the home and away season.
 * The Rising Star was awarded to Tyla Hanks of.
 * The best on ground medal in the AFL Women's Grand Final was won by Kate Lutkins of.
 * The goal of the year was awarded to Courtney Hodder of.
 * The mark of the year was awarded to Danielle Ponter of.
 * AFLW Players Association awards:
 * The most valuable player was awarded to Brianna Davey of.
 * The most courageous player was awarded to Chelsea Randall of.
 * The best captain was awarded to Ellie Blackburn of.
 * The best first year player was awarded to Ellie McKenzie of.
 * The AFLW Coaches Association awards:
 * The champion player of the year was awarded to Kiara Bowers of.
 * The senior coach of the year was awarded to Craig Starcevich of.
 * Brianna Davey was named captain of the All-Australian team. Twelve of the fourteen clubs had at least one representative in the 21-woman team.
 * The minor premiership was won by.
 * The wooden spoon was "won" by.

Leading goalkickers
Source:
 * Numbers highlighted in blue indicates the player led the season's goal kicking tally at the end of that round.