The Wait Is Over — Arsenal Are Premier League Champions for the First Time in 22 Years
It's done. It's finally, gloriously, beautifully done.
After 22 long years, after three heartbreaking runner-up finishes in a row, after a nine-point lead that nearly slipped through their fingers in April, after every near miss and every "Arsenal bottle it" headline — Mikel Arteta's Arsenal are the 2025/26 Premier League champions.
The red half of north London exploded tonight. Not because Arsenal kicked a ball — they didn't. They were watching at home, glued to their screens, holding their breath as Manchester City faced Bournemouth at the Vitality Stadium. All City needed was a win to keep the title race alive heading into the final weekend. Instead, they drew 1-1. And in that moment, 22 years of hurt came to an end.
The wait is over. Arsenal are champions of England.
How It Happened — The Night the Title Was Won
Arsenal had done everything in their own power. The night before, on Monday, they beat Burnley 1-0 to move five points clear at the top with 82 points and one game remaining. The message to City was stark: you have to win at Bournemouth, or it's over.
City couldn't do it.
A 1-1 draw at the Vitality Stadium — a result that also sends Bournemouth into European football for the first time in their history — meant City could only reach a maximum of 81 points with their final game still to play. Arsenal, sitting on 82, are mathematically untouchable.
The title is theirs.
Arsenal will now lift the Premier League trophy after their final game of the season at Crystal Palace on Sunday, May 24 — a ceremony at Selhurst Park that will be a pure celebration. And then, just six days later, they travel to Budapest for the UEFA Champions League final against PSG on Saturday, May 30. One trophy already. One more within reach.
The Numbers That Tell the Story
This Arsenal title didn't arrive by accident. It was built on a foundation of defensive excellence, set-piece supremacy, and a resilience that refused to break even when everything looked like it was falling apart. Here are the numbers that define their season:
82 points — Arsenal's final tally, enough to hold off Manchester City with a game to spare.
25 wins from 37 league matches — the most victories of any side in the division this season.
26 goals conceded — the fewest of any team in the Premier League, and at least six fewer than any other side. An extraordinary defensive record.
19 clean sheets — including four consecutive clean sheets in the title run-in after losing to City at the Etihad.
18 goals from corners — a new Premier League seasonal record, breaking the previous best and underlining Arsenal's devastating set-piece threat.
562 days at the top of the Premier League since the start of the 2022-23 season — 207 more than any other club. They have been up there for years. They just needed the title to match the dominance.
David Raya wins the Golden Glove for the third consecutive season — a goalkeeper who has been quietly one of the best in the world.
Viktor Gyökeres finishes with 21 goals in all competitions, including 14 in the league — the first player to score 20+ goals in all competitions in his first Arsenal season since Alexis Sánchez in 2014-15. He is the first since Thierry Henry in the Premier League era before that.
Arteta — The Man Who Rebuilt Arsenal
Numbers alone cannot capture what Mikel Arteta has achieved at Arsenal.
He arrived at the Emirates in December 2019, inheriting a club that was drifting, directionless, and had spent over a decade without a credible challenge for the league title. The criticism never stopped. The doubts were constant. Even this season, when Arsenal squandered a nine-point lead in the space of eleven days during a chaotic April — including that agonising 2-1 defeat at the Etihad that briefly handed the psychological advantage to City — the knives were out again. The narrative was familiar: Arsenal can't do it. Arteta can't do it.
And then they did four consecutive wins without conceding a single goal, held their nerve while City dropped points against Everton and then Bournemouth, and here we are.
Arteta becomes the first former Premier League player to win the trophy as a manager. He played for Arsenal between 2011 and 2016 and was appointed manager just over six years ago. What he has done in that time — rebuilt the squad, established a culture, turned Arsenal from perennial nearly-men into genuine serial contenders and now champions — deserves to be celebrated without reservation.
He said before this title run: "We will all be Bournemouth fans." Tonight, every Arsenal supporter on the planet was a Bournemouth fan. And Bournemouth delivered.
The Invincibles Connection
The last Arsenal captain to lift the Premier League trophy was Patrick Vieira, in the 2003/04 season — the most iconic title triumph in the club's history. That team, managed by Arsène Wenger, went through the entire 38-match league campaign without a single defeat: 26 wins, 12 draws, 90 points. Thierry Henry scored 30 goals. They became The Invincibles, and that name has echoed around football ever since.
This Arsenal team is very different to the Invincibles. They do not play with the same swashbuckling, attacking freedom that Wenger's side produced. Arteta's side has been criticised throughout this campaign for being overly functional — heavy on set-pieces, robust in defence, sometimes lacking the attacking creativity that fans of beautiful football crave. And those critics are not entirely wrong.
But here is what is also true: Arsenal have conceded just 26 goals this season, their second-fewest total in any Premier League campaign in their history. They have allowed only 0.74 expected goals per game — the fourth-best figure ever recorded in a Premier League season going back to 2012-13. They have been imperious from corners, with a record-breaking 18 goals. And when their backs were against the wall in April, they didn't fold. They came back.
Champions find a way. This Arsenal team found a way.
The Three Near Misses That Make This Sweeter
For Arsenal fans, this title is not just a trophy. It is the release of three years of accumulated pain.
In 2023/24, Arsenal led the title race for much of the season before finishing an agonising two points behind Manchester City. Two points. After 38 games. It was, by any measure, a devastating way to fall short.
The year before that, 2022/23, they led the table at Christmas before City's relentless consistency eventually wore them down in the second half of the season.
And before that, 2021/22 was a season of recovery and rebuild, planting the seeds for what was to come.
Three consecutive runner-up finishes. Three consecutive years of being so close and yet so far. The scar tissue of those near misses is why the celebrations tonight are so raw, so emotional, so completely uninhibited. This wasn't just a title win. This was an exorcism.
The Double Dream: Budapest Awaits
Here is the thing that makes this season almost surreal: they are not done yet.
Arsenal's Champions League campaign this season has been, if anything, even more impressive than their league form. They went through the entire league phase without dropping a point — a perfect record. They then eliminated Bayer Leverkusen, Sporting CP, and Atlético Madrid in the knockout stages. Viktor Gyökeres scored the decisive goal against Atlético in the semi-final second leg to send the Gunners to their second-ever Champions League final.
On Saturday, May 30, Arsenal face Paris Saint-Germain — the defending Champions League holders — at the Puskás Aréna in Budapest.
Win that, and Arsenal complete the domestic and European double in the same season. Win that, and this becomes the greatest campaign in the club's 140-year history. Win that, and Mikel Arteta's name is carved into football's all-time list of legendary managers without debate.
The trophy lift at Crystal Palace on Sunday is the first celebration. Budapest on May 30 is the ultimate dream.
Where This Title Sits in History
Arsenal have now won the English top-flight title 14 times — placing them third in the all-time list, behind only Liverpool and Manchester United who have each won the top division 20 times. They now have four Premier League titles specifically, moving two clear of Liverpool in the Premier League era and just one behind Chelsea.
This is the fifth time in Premier League history that three different clubs have won the title in three successive seasons — following Liverpool in 2024/25 and City in 2023/24.
And teenager Max Dowman has made history as the youngest player ever to win the Premier League, having been part of the squad this season. A small footnote in a big night, but a reminder that this Arsenal story has future chapters still to be written.
One Final Thought
Twenty-two years is a long time.
Entire careers have been played out in the shadow of 2003/04. Entire generations of Arsenal fans have grown up never knowing what it feels like to be champions of England. Children who weren't born when Patrick Vieira lifted that trophy are now grown adults celebrating in the streets tonight.
Arsenal have been the nearly team for so long that "nearly" had started to feel like a permanent identity. Not anymore.
They are Premier League champions. They are going to Budapest. And for one night — one brilliant, long-awaited, thoroughly deserved night — every Arsenal fan on the planet is allowed to forget about everything else and just enjoy this.
Welcome back to the summit, Arsenal. You took your time. But you got there.
Stay locked in with Extra Time Updates for full coverage of Arsenal's Premier League trophy lift at Crystal Palace on Sunday and all the build-up to the Champions League final in Budapest on May 30.
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