Winners, records and format: the history of the Premier League

What the Premier League is

The Premier League is the top division of English men's football: 20 clubs, a season that runs from August to May, and three relegation places at the bottom that keep every match in the lower half alive. It sits above the English Football League (EFL), which runs the three divisions beneath it, and it is organised as a private company whose shareholders are its 20 member clubs, with the Football Association holding a special share. Each club has one share and one vote, and rule changes or major broadcasting deals need the backing of at least 14 clubs.

Two things set it apart from the old First Division it replaced. It sells its own broadcasting rights, and it keeps that money among its own members rather than sharing it across the whole league pyramid. Almost everything else about the modern English game, from stadium rebuilds to the arrival of foreign owners and coaches, followed from that decision.

How the Premier League began: the 1992 breakaway

The Premier League's history starts with an argument about television money. By the start of the 1990s the biggest First Division clubs believed they were earning too little from broadcasting, and that the Football League's habit of spreading income across 92 clubs held them back against rivals in Europe. English clubs had also only just returned to European competition in 1990, after the five-year ban that followed the Heysel disaster.

The FA Premier League was founded on 20 February 1992. The 22 First Division clubs resigned from the Football League that May, and BSkyB won the first broadcasting rights with a bid of £304 million over five years. Live top-flight football moved to satellite television, and the clubs took a far larger share of the proceeds than the old arrangement had ever given them.

The first matches were played on 15 August 1992. At Bramall Lane, Brian Deane headed Sheffield United in front against Manchester United after about five minutes, the first goal in the new competition, and added a second in a 2-1 win.

The new name did not change who won it.

Premier League format: how it works over 38 matches

The Premier League format is a straight double round-robin. Every club plays every other club twice, once at home and once away, which makes 38 league matches each and 380 in total. A win is worth three points, a draw one point and a defeat nothing. There is no split, no play-off for the title and no mid-season reset: the club with most points after the 38th round is champion.

The league did not start with 20 clubs. It kicked off with 22, and for the 1994-95 season four clubs were relegated and only two promoted, bringing the division down to 20 from 1995-96 onwards. The 380-match calendar has stayed the same ever since.

When clubs finish level on points, goal difference separates them first and then goals scored. If a tie still decides the title, a relegation place or a European spot, head-to-head results are used, and in the unlikely event that nothing splits the clubs, the rules provide for a play-off at a neutral ground.

Promotion, relegation and the road to Europe

Three clubs go down at the end of every season, replaced by three from the EFL Championship. The top two in the Championship are promoted automatically; the third place goes to the winner of a play-off between the clubs finishing third to sixth, with the final at Wembley. Promotion through that one match brings a share of the Premier League's broadcasting income, which explains the tension around it.

At the other end of the table, the top four qualify for the next UEFA Champions League. UEFA's newer rules also hand an extra Champions League place to the two national associations whose clubs performed best in Europe the season before, so English clubs can earn a fifth place through results abroad. Further places in the Europa League and the Conference League go to the next clubs in the table and to the winners of the FA Cup and the EFL Cup, and when a cup winner has already qualified through the league, the spare place passes down the table. Because of those knock-on rules, a sixth- or seventh-placed finish can be enough for Europe in some years and not in others, so the final weekend is rarely quiet anywhere above mid-table.

Premier League winners by club

The list of Premier League winners is short: only seven clubs won the title in the first 34 seasons, from 1992-93 to 2025-26. Manchester United won 13 of those titles between 1993 and 2013, all of them under Sir Alex Ferguson, a record for a manager. Manchester City's eight titles all came between 2012 and 2024. Arsenal ended a 22-year wait with their fourth Premier League title in 2025-26, after finishing second in each of the three previous seasons.

Two names on that list stand out. Blackburn Rovers, promoted through the play-offs in 1992 and bankrolled by the local industrialist Jack Walker, won the title in 1994-95 under Kenny Dalglish by a single point from Manchester United. Alan Shearer scored 34 league goals that season. Leicester City's title in 2015-16 was stranger still: Claudio Ranieri's side had nearly been relegated the year before, started the campaign as 5,000-1 outsiders and finished ten points clear.

Eras that shaped the league

Season by season, the honours list falls into clean blocks. The 1990s and early 2000s belonged to Ferguson's United, with Arsène Wenger's Arsenal the one side that repeatedly broke through, winning doubles in 1997-98 and 2001-02 and then going the whole of 2003-04 without a league defeat. Chelsea, transformed by Roman Abramovich's money and José Mourinho's management, won back-to-back titles in 2004-05 and 2005-06, the first with 95 points.

United answered with three titles in a row from 2006-07, and Ferguson retired in 2013 with a 13th. Manchester City's first title in 2011-12, won on goal difference after Sergio Agüero's stoppage-time goal beat Queens Park Rangers 3-2 on the final day, began a different era altogether, one that under Pep Guardiola produced the first 100-point season and, in 2023-24, the first run of four consecutive titles by any club in English top-flight history. Jürgen Klopp's Liverpool broke that run once, in 2019-20, ending the club's 30-year wait for a league title.

Premier League records that have lasted

Some Premier League records look safe for a long time. Arsenal's 2003-04 side, the "Invincibles", won 26 and drew 12 of their 38 matches and remain the only team to go through a Premier League season unbeaten. Manchester City's 2017-18 team became the first to reach 100 points, scoring 106 goals and finishing 19 points clear of second place; Chelsea's 95 points from 2004-05 had been the mark before that.

Alan Shearer scored 260 Premier League goals for Blackburn Rovers and Newcastle United between 1992 and 2006, including 112 in four seasons at Ewood Park. His 260th came for Newcastle against Sunderland in April 2006.

Six clubs played in each of the first 34 seasons: Arsenal, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur. Everton's place in that group is the oddest: the club's last league title came in 1986-87, five years before the Premier League began, yet it appears in every one of those 34 seasons.