Arsenal end 22-year wait for Premier League title

Arsenal are the 2025/26 Premier League champions, winning the title for the first time in 22 years.

Manchester City's 1-1 draw at AFC Bournemouth on Tuesday night leaves them four points adrift of first place in the Premier League table, so they are unable to catch the Gunners on the final day of the season.

Arsenal's success follows three consecutive seasons in which they finished as runners-up, including in 2023/24 when Man City pipped them to the title by an agonising margin of two points.

Mikel Arteta becomes the first former Premier League player to win the trophy as a manager. He took charge of the Gunners in December 2019, having played for the club between 2011 and 2016.

Five days before he was appointed Arsenal manager, Arteta sat in the opposition dugout at Emirates Stadium with Manchester City, unable to comprehend what he was witnessing.

Arteta had lifted the FA Cup twice as captain then lived through the late-Wenger turbulence but this felt different.

Arsenal were three goals down by half-time and they finished the match in front of thousands of empty seats and in an eerie quiet.

Arteta, assistant to Pep Guardiola, the manager he would spend the next half-decade trying to dethrone, was stunned by how far the club had fallen.

When Arteta was handed the job of reigniting Arsenal, reconnecting with the supporters became a priority.

It has been an ongoing, sometimes difficult process but the results have been unmistakable in recent weeks.

Supporters lined the streets to welcome the team coach into Emirates Stadium before producing one of its greatest atmospheres as Arsenal reached a first Uefa Champions League final in 20 years and at crucial points on the way to ending a 22-year wait for the Premier League title.

Attention to detail is one of Arteta's defining traits. He requested the tunnel cover be removed at the Emirates so that both teams could hear the noise of the crowd before kick-off – inspiring his own and unsettling opponents.

He also made North London Forever the club’s matchday anthem, a song now woven into their resurgence.

Arteta's meticulousness extends to every inch of the club.

Motivational messages cover the walls at their London Colney training base. Next to one reading "Together we make history" on a wood-slatted wall, Arteta installed a black silhouette of a Premier League trophy – only lighting it after winning the title. New signings were shown the silhouette and told exactly why it was there.

In his seven years at Arsenal, he has become the master of motivation, cultivating a high-performance culture.

In May 2023, Arteta introduced a chocolate Labrador to the training ground, assigning a staff member as her primary carer. "Her name is Win, we all love winning and Win needs a lot of love," Arteta told the club's official website at the time.

"So the love for Win, that was basically the feeling."

The players adore Win and take turns walking her.

Around the same time, he had a 150-year-old olive tree planted in the grounds. "We have to look after those roots every single day, make sure they don’t get poisoned, don’t get damaged and it’s in the right condition," he said.

Arteta thinks carefully about the right messages to convey, tailoring training sessions depending on the moment.

In one session, he played a TikTok edit on a big screen while the players trained beneath it. In another, they formed a circle balancing pens between their fingers while moving with the ball to sharpen concentration.

He has been pleased to see the players taking the initiative and generating their own ideas.

Energy was a recurring theme in the All or Nothing Amazon documentary, when cameras were allowed behind-the-scenes during the 2021/22 season.

After losing three of their first five games, ahead of a north London derby, on a flip-chart Arteta drew a cartoon heart labelled "passion" and a brain, with "clarity" written above, holding hands and a flag-holding Arsenal fan in the background.

"Guys, we have to play with our big hearts," he told the squad. "At the same time, we have to play with a big brain – and these have to work together." They were 3-0 up after 34 minutes and won comfortably.

Before other games, he invited Stuart MacFarlane, the club photographer of 30 years, to deliver an impassioned speech and he once told the players about the heart surgery he underwent as a child.

On one occasion, Arteta aimed to galvanise his players ahead of an important away fixture at Liverpool by blasting the Reds' anthem "You'll Never Walk Alone" over a PA system at the training ground.

In another changing room scene, Arteta plugged a giant bulb into a socket to demonstrate energy and connectivity. "A bulb by itself is nothing, I want to see a team connected to each other and that shines," he said.

Arteta looks for three qualities in every new player or staff member: passion, respect, and what he calls "the we" – a commitment to the collective.

He believes he has found that in his staff and the final puzzle piece of his title-winning backroom team came from a relationship formed 26 years ago.

While on a season-long loan at Paris Saint-Germain when he was 18, Arteta grew close to Gabriel Heinze, who replaced Carlos Cuesta as his assistant last summer.

Heinze was "like a brother" to Arteta, former teammate Didier Domi recalled.

Heinze has overseen the organisation and aggressive intensity of a defence that has conceded the fewest goals and kept the most clean sheets in the league this season.

Set-pieces have been another defining strength. Nicolas Jover, the set-piece coach who turned Arsenal into record-breakers, had a long-standing relationship with Arteta before joining Arsenal in summer 2021.

At Man City, Arteta recommended Jover to Guardiola and, joining as an assistant with a focus on set-pieces in July 2019, he was a key figure in the 2020/21 title win before joining up with Arteta two months later.

Jover had previously worked closely with goalkeeper coach Inaki Cana at Brentford. Cana was one of Arteta's first hires, arriving four days after he became head coach.

The Spaniard had coached David Raya at Brentford and has been pivotal in Raya – who signed from the Bees in July 2024 – becoming a serial Golden Glove winner, being presented with his third successive award on Monday night.

Assistant coach Albert Stuivenberg has also been part of the project from day one.

Only one player remains from the starting XI of Arteta's first game in charge. It is indicative of what Arteta went on to do that the player is the academy jewel, Bukayo Saka.

On a rain-soaked Boxing Day down on the south coast, 18-year-old Saka played left-back in a 1-1 draw with AFC Bournemouth.

Arsenal fell behind and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang equalised but the Gabon striker was part of a group of senior players – including Mesut Ozil and David Luiz – eased out to make space for emerging talent.

Alongside Saka, Emile Smith Rowe was an early breakout, followed by Ethan Nwaneri and Myles Lewis-Skelly. The latest is Max Dowman, who became the youngest Premier League goalscorer when he netted against Everton in March.

Those close to Arteta describe a "single-mindedness" essential to making tough decisions.

Aaron Ramsdale was outstanding in the 2022/23 season and was named in the PFA Team of the Year, yet Arteta still signed Raya and despite facing intense scrutiny, gradually made the Spaniard his No 1 – a call now fully vindicated.

Considering "the we", he saw something in Raya that elevated the whole team in a way Ramsdale's talent alone could not.

Arsenal now possess one of the strongest squads in the world, with at least two elite players in every position. The days of half-empty stands at the Emirates feel like a distant memory.

Arsenal have now won four Premier League titles, putting them two clear of Liverpool and only one behind Chelsea. Manchester United have won 13 Premier League titles and Man City have won eight. The only other clubs to have been crowned Premier League champions are Blackburn Rovers and Leicester City, with one triumph each.

Across the full history of the English top flight, Arsenal have now been crowned champions 14 times – behind only Liverpool and Man Utd, who have both won the title 20 times.

Arsenal's success means the title has been won by three different clubs in the last three seasons, following Liverpool in 2024/25 and Man City in 2023/24. This is only the fifth time the Premier League has produced three or more different winners in successive seasons.

The last time such a sequence occurred, Leicester City’s fairytale triumph in 2015/16 was followed by Chelsea in 2016/17 and then Man City in 2017/18, Pep Guardiola’s first title-winning campaign.

The only longer run was a four-year stretch from 2012/13 to 2015/16, when the trophy changed hands between Man Utd, Man City, Chelsea and Leicester.

Dowman has made history as the youngest player ever to win the Premier League. Two months after becoming the competition’s youngest goalscorer, at 16 years and 73 days, he surpasses Phil Foden’s record.

Foden won the title with Man City when aged 17 years and 350 days in 2017/18; Dowman will be 16 years and 144 days old on the final day of this campaign.

Having made more than five appearances, one of the 40 commemorative silver medals sent to Arsenal to distribute will be given to him.

Arsenal’s success has been built on spreading goals around the team. Viktor Gyokeres, signed last summer, is their leading goalscorer but Saka, Eberechi Eze, Leandro Trossard, Martin Zubimendi, Declan Rice and Mikel Merino have all contributed regularly.

Assists have been similarly shared, with Trossard, Martin Odegaard, Rice, Saka, Jurien Timber and Gabriel Magalhaes contributing at least four each.

At the back, Raya has been outstanding, winning the Coca-Cola Premier League Golden Glove award – for keeping the most clean sheets – for a third successive season.

In front of Raya, centre-backs Gabriel and William Saliba have been at the heart of the shrewdest defence in the league.

Patrick Vieira was the last Arsenal captain to lift the Premier League trophy, in 2003/04, leading a side that featured stars such as Thierry Henry – the Golden Boot winner with 30 goals – Ashley Cole, Sol Campbell and Dennis Bergkamp.

The team became known as "The Invincibles" after remaining unbeaten throughout their entire 38-match league campaign. They collected 90 points, from 26 victories and 12 draws.

Arsenal have won five FA Cups and six FA Community Shields since 2004 but the Premier League trophy had eluded them until now.