Liverpool, United Kingdom: Twenty-six thousand people are expected to fill three sides of Liverpool football club’s Anfield ground for an emotional service to remember the 96 people who died at Hillsborough on April 15 1989, 25 years ago on Tuesday.

The quarter-century anniversary of the crush at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough ground during the 1989 FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest has fallen to be marked just two weeks into the new inquest into how the 96 Liverpool supporters died, being held in a converted courtroom in Warrington.

Proceedings have been adjourned for a week around the anniversary, after five days in which families read personal statements about their loved ones who died.

The managers of both Liverpool and Everton football clubs, Brendan Rodgers and Roberto Martinez, will give biblical readings at the service, a candle for each of the 96 will be lit by senior Liverpool church leaders, and Labour politician Andy Burnham will make a speech.

Trevor Hicks, the president of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, who spoke at the inquest about his devastation and “loss of purpose” when his only daughters Sarah, then 19, and Victoria, 15, were killed at Hillsborough, will speak to the crowd, as will the HFSG chair, Margaret Aspinall, who has yet to make her personal statement to the inquest on behalf of her son, James, who died in the crush aged 18.

Gerry Marsden, with the Liverpool-based singer Neil McHale, will sing You’ll Never Walk Alone, Marsden’s original single which has long been adopted as the football club fans’ anthem of choice.

“It is going to be a hard day, very emotional, for all the families,” Aspinall said. “We have been hearing in the new inquest so much more about the 96, who they really were, and the loss and suffering the families have undergone for 25 years. It is extremely poignant that the 25th anniversary has come now, as the new inquest we fought for for so long, has started.

“We are thinking also of the supporters, the people who were at Hillsborough and survived, some of whom face the ordeal over the next year, of being witnesses, giving evidence to the inquest about what happened on that terrible day.”

Burnham, whose address in 2009 as the then serving Labour minister for culture, media and sport was drowned out by cries from the crowd of “Justice for the 96” will be given a warmer welcome this time, Aspinall said.

After that 20th anniversary service Burnham and the Merseyside Labour MP and then minister Maria Eagle worked to secure the release of official documents on the disaster, which were then reviewed by the Hillsborough Independent Panel in its September 2012 report. The original 1990-91 inquest, against which the families had always campaigned, was quashed in December 2012 and the new one ordered.

“Andy Burnham will have a very different reception this time,” Aspinall said, “because everybody recognises that in him, we had an MP finally, who listened to the voices of the people.”