Competition

Premier League

England's first division. Twenty clubs, thirty-eight rounds, no play-offs and no second chances — the league that decides the English title and fills the continent's two big cups. Pick a club, or read how the competition got here.

First edition
1992
Editions
35
Run by
Premier League
Reigning champion
Arsenal
Most titles
2 clubs · 20 titles

The story

English league football is the oldest in the world — the Football League kicked off in 1888 with twelve clubs, and Preston North End won it without losing a match. For a century the First Division was the top of that pyramid, and the roll of champions runs through Aston Villa and Sunderland before the First World War, Arsenal's Herbert Chapman sides in the 1930s, and the Liverpool teams that won eleven titles in eighteen seasons from 1973.

The Premier League broke away from the Football League in 1992, when the First Division clubs resigned to sell their television rights on their own. It was the commercial split rather than a sporting one — the same twenty-two clubs, the same pyramid beneath them, promotion and relegation untouched — but the money it brought in changed who could compete and who the league was played in front of.

The competition settled at twenty clubs in 1995 and has been thirty-eight rounds ever since: everyone plays everyone home and away, the table decides the title, and there is no play-off at either end. That flatness is unusual among the big European leagues and is most of why the run-in carries what it does — a champion is decided by a season rather than by a final.

What the league exports is not only the football. Its broadcast deals reach more countries than any other domestic competition, which is why a Saturday fixture kicks off at a time that suits an audience thousands of miles away, and why so many of its clubs are owned from outside England. The result is a division followed in places that will never see it in person — including, in numbers, Brazil.

This season

The 2026/27 season brings back three very different stories: Coventry City, champions of the Championship, return after 25 years away; Ipswich Town are back after just one season down, having gone straight back up; and Hull City end a nine-year wait, sealed in the play-off final. Twenty clubs chase the Premier League title over thirty-eight rounds, from August to May.

See the season