It’s been a season of thrills, spills and fingernail-shredding pressure but Arsenal have finally been crowned 2025-26 Premier League champions after Manchester City‘s 1-1 draw at AFC Bournemouth ensured that Pep Guardiola can no longer usurp his one-time protégé Mikel Arteta at the top of the table.
The Gunners’ 1-0 win over relegated Burnley on Monday had taken them to within three points of becoming champions of England for the first time in over 20 years. Had City beaten Bournemouth, the title race would have gone to the final day of the season. Alas, it’s all over now.
After a relatively patchy start to the campaign, Man City managed to get back on track and have been lodged in second place since the start of November. They have been breathing down Arsenal’s necks ever since, but Arteta’s side refused to buckle under the pressure and held out to claim the championship with a game to spare.
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After finishing runners-up for the third consecutive year last season as Liverpool were crowned 2024-25 champions, the Gunners spent a considerable amount of money refitting their squad in the hope of going one better this time around. Over £260 million was invested over the summer of 2025 with Martín Zubimendi, Eberechi Eze, Noni Madueke and Viktor Gyökeres accounting for the majority of the outlay.
Arteta’s side certainly started as they meant to go on, beating rivals Manchester United on the opening day and spending most of August as league leaders. After losing that status over the course of September, they regained it on Oct. 4 and have barely budged from their perch since. In total, the Gunners have spent a total of 234 days at the top of the table across 32 gameweeks this campaign.
The foundation of Arsenal’s success this year has been a hyper-focus on set-piece goals and physical prowess. With a newfound reputation for skirmishes in the six-yard box, the Gunners have racked up 35 set-piece goals in all competitions in 2025-26, which is more than any club across all of Europe’s top five leagues in each of the last 10 seasons.
Critics might bemoan the lack of style exuded during Arsenal’s previous title triumph — when Arsène Wenger’s “Invincibles” won became champions in 2003-04 without losing a single league game — but you simply cannot argue with the result. Arteta has cultivated an effective, set piece-centric approach that has — when all is said and done — got his side over the line, and it may yet win them a UEFA Champions League final before the season is over.
But there have been a few wobbles along the way. A fairly comprehensive 2-0 defeat against Man City in the Carabao Cup final on March 22 did little to steady the nerves. With the pressure increasing and the margins for error getting ever tighter, the Gunners faltered monetarily and lost back-to-back league games against Bournemouth and City in mid-April — an untimely blip that allowed Pep Guardiola’s side to gain a foothold in their bid to come up on the rails and usurp the league leaders.
However, Arteta’s resilient squad rallied and haven’t dropped a single point in the four games that followed, with a vital victory over Burnley moving them to the very cusp of glory. Another three points on Sunday would have been enough to guarantee the title, but instead their game at Crystal Palace will be a victory lap as the Gunners can finally lay the ghosts of the past few seasons to rest.
2021-22
Arsenal were the youngest squad in the Premier League with an average age of just 24 years and 308 days. They were also never really in the title race, instead jostling for European qualification. Despite being chased hard by Liverpool, City spent the entire second half of the season at the top of the table and eventually won the league by a single point.
By way of comparison, Guardiola’s champions claimed 30 points from their remaining 12 games of the season, while Arsenal could only muster 18 in the same time frame, earning them a fifth-place finish and UEFA Europa League qualification.
2022-23
Three years ago, Arsenal were perched top of the table with 27 matches played, five points clear of defending champions City in second, having both played the same number of games.
The Gunners remained top until gameweek 33, when they were unceremoniously thrashed 4-1 by City at the Etihad and bumped from top spot in the process. City held firm, going on to win the title by five points, having taken 31 points in their final 12 games, as opposed to Arsenal’s comparatively meagre 21-point haul. That was the first part of City’s Treble triumph, as they also won the FA Cup and Champions League that season.
2023-24
Arsenal found themselves competing with Manchester City and Liverpool for the title for the majority of the 2023-24 campaign. Indeed, the three teams were often separated by just a point or two throughout the second half of the season in what proved to be one of the more enthralling title races in recent years.
The Gunners went the distance, and even topped the table on several occasions in May. Ultimately, it wasn’t enough to prevent City from coming up on the rails and steamrolling their way to a fourth consecutive title win. Guardiola’s side earned just one more point than Arsenal over the course of their respective final 12 games, but it was enough for them to wrap things up with victory over West Ham United on the final day.
2024-25
With Manchester City suffering from burnout and well off the pace in the title race, Liverpool and Arsenal were left to duke it out at the top of the Premier League. Arteta’s team had been in second place since December, but a run of dropped points during the last few weeks of the season (notably a galling 2-1 home defeat against Bournemouth in early May) allowed Liverpool to pull away at the top to finish 10 points clear.
Despite dropping as low as seventh just before Christmas, City did at least manage to improve their results after the turn of the year. They even put more points on the board than Arsenal (27 points to 21) from their final 12 games of the campaign to end up in third place, just three points behind the exhausted Gunners
