The present paper has a number of distinct purposes. First is to give a description of a class of electromagnetic knots from the perspective of foliation theory. Knotted solutions are then interpreted in terms of two codimension-2 foliations whose knotted leaves intersect orthogonally everywhere in spacetime. Secondly, we show how the foliations give rise to field lines and how the topological invariants emerge. The machinery used here emphasizes intrinsic properties of the leaves instead of observer dependent quantities—such as a time function, a local rest frame or a Cauchy hypersurface. Finally, we discuss the celebrated Hopf–Rañada solution in details and stress how the foliation approach may help in future developments of the theory of electromagnetic knots. We conclude with several possible applications, extensions and generalizations.