UEFA Champions League: 2025/26 Season Review

Summary: Paris Saint-Germain retained the Champions League on 30 May 2026, beating Arsenal 4-3 on penalties in Budapest after the final finished 1-1. Arsenal went the entire campaign without being beaten in normal play and still ended it as runners-up. Kylian Mbappé finished as top scorer with 15 goals. The 2026/27 league phase began on 8 September 2026 and ends with the final in Madrid on 5 June 2027.

• Arsenal went unbeaten in normal play across all 15 Champions League matches and still lost the final, on penalties.
• PSG retained the trophy, becoming only the second club to defend it in the Champions League era and the first French side ever to do it.
• Mbappé broke Ronaldo’s league phase scoring record with 13 goals, finishing on 15 for the season.
• Kai Havertz put Arsenal ahead after six minutes, Ousmane Dembélé equalised from the spot, and Gabriel Magalhães missed the fifth penalty of the shootout.
• A season full of records: youngest-ever player, first perfect league phase, and Cypriot history made.
• The 2026/27 season is already under way, with the final set for Madrid on 5 June 2027.

The 2025/26 UEFA Champions League delivered everything a football fan could ask for: a record-breaking scoring machine, an English side that went a whole campaign without being beaten in normal play, the defending champions coming back for more, and a final settled by penalties under the lights of Budapest's Puskás Aréna. It ended with Paris Saint-Germain lifting the trophy for the second year running.

Champions League: The New League Phase Format

For only the second season running, the Champions League’s revamped 36-team league phase – replacing the traditional group stage – shaped the competition’s destiny. The league phase kicked off on 16 September 2025 and ran through to 28 January 2026, with the knockout rounds beginning on 17 February.

The expanded format delivered more drama, more upsets, and more records than almost any previous edition. Four sides – Bodø/Glimt, Kairat, Union Saint-Gilloise, and Pafos – were making their first-ever appearances in the league phase. And almost immediately, history was being made in unexpected corners of the continent.

Mbappé’s Record-Shattering Campaign

If there was one name that defined the 2025/26 Champions League from its very first matchday, it was Kylian Mbappé. The Real Madrid striker put on a one-man scoring masterclass that had analysts reaching for the record books.

Mbappé scored 13 goals in seven league phase outings alone – a new competition record for that stage, eclipsing Cristiano Ronaldo’s previous best of 11 set in 2015/16. His feats included hat-tricks, doubles, and moments of sheer individual brilliance that reduced defences to spectators.

Among his highlights: a hat-trick at Kairat Almaty on Matchday 2, and then the second-fastest hat-trick in Champions League history in Real Madrid’s 4-3 win over Olympiacos on Matchday 5 – scoring three times in six minutes and 42 seconds.

A knee injury sidelined him for two knockout matches, but he returned to add goals in both legs of the quarter-final. His final tally of 15 goals makes him the Champions League top scorer for the second time in his career – only Ronaldo has managed more in a single edition. Real Madrid, however, would not make it past Bayern München in the quarters.

Champions League: Arsenal’s Flawless Journey

No team in 2025/26 was more relentless, more clinical, or more historically significant than Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal. The Gunners didn’t just reach the final – they did so without losing a single match across the entire campaign.

Arsenal became the first team in the competition’s history to win all eight matches in the league phase. That perfect record was not a fluke – it reflected a team operating at the highest level of organisation, pressing, and finishing.

In the knockout rounds, they defeated Bayer Leverkusen 3-1 on aggregate in the Round of 16, then edged Sporting CP 1-0 in the quarter-finals. The semi-final against Atlético de Madrid was the sternest test yet.

The first leg in Madrid ended in a hard-fought 1-1 draw, with Viktor Gyökeres converting a penalty for Arsenal before Julián Alvarez levelled from the spot. In the second leg at the Emirates, Bukayo Saka’s finish on the stroke of half-time proved to be the decisive moment, giving Arsenal a 1-0 win on the night and 2-1 on aggregate.

The victory extended Arsenal’s unbeaten Champions League run to 14 fixtures – a new club record. Of the 44 instances of a team playing 14 or more games in a European campaign, Arsenal are the only one to remain unbeaten throughout.

PSG: Defending Champions Return

Having claimed the Champions League crown in 2024/25, Paris Saint-Germain returned this season with the same hunger – and the same talismanic forward leading their charge. Under Luis Enrique, PSG played a brand of football that was at once fluid, intelligent, and devastating on the counter.

Ousmane Dembélé – the reigning Ballon d’Or winner – was once again PSG’s key man, and he delivered in the most pressure-filled moments. In their semi-final against Bayern München, he swept Khvicha Kvaratskhelia’s precise pass into the net just three minutes into the second leg at the Allianz Arena, effectively sealing their place in the final despite Harry Kane’s late reply.

PSG became the first French club to appear in successive Champions League finals, and the first defending champions to reach the final since Real Madrid in 2017/18. Then they answered the question that had followed them all season. Back-to-back titles put them alongside Real Madrid, who won three in a row between 2016 and 2018, as the only clubs to retain the trophy since the competition was rebranded in the early 1990s, and made them the first French side ever to manage it.

The Final: How PSG Beat Arsenal in Budapest

On 30 May 2026, a crowd of 61,035 filled the Puskás Aréna for a final that swung both ways. Arsenal led inside six minutes: a Marquinhos clearance deflected off Leandro Trossard, Kai Havertz ran clear and finished, and the Gunners took that lead into the interval. PSG turned it just after the hour, when Khvicha Kvaratskhelia was fouled by Christian Mosquera and Ousmane Dembélé sent David Raya the wrong way from the spot. Kvaratskhelia struck the post late on after a fine intervention from Myles Lewis-Skelly, Bradley Barcola put a chance to win it wide with almost the last kick of normal time, and an Arsenal penalty appeal in extra time was waved away by referee Daniel Siebert. It finished 1-1 after 120 minutes.

Gonçalo Ramos, Désiré Doué, Achraf Hakimi and Lucas Beraldo all converted in the shootout. Eberechi Eze missed for Arsenal, and when the fifth and decisive kick fell to Gabriel Magalhães he sent it over the bar, giving PSG a 4-3 win. Vitinha was named man of the match. Luis Enrique has now won the competition three times as a manager, after Barcelona in 2015 and PSG in 2025.

Road to the Final at a Glance

Champions League: Season Highlights & Records

Beyond the headline acts, 2025/26 was a season studded with remarkable individual and team performances that will be remembered long after the final whistle in Budapest.

Chelsea became the first team in Champions League history to have three teenagers score in the same match, with Marc Guiu, Estêvão, and Tyrique all on the scoresheet in their 5-1 win over Ajax. Antoine Griezmann scored in his 12th successive Champions League season – a mark of extraordinary longevity at the highest level.

PSG’s 7-2 demolition of Bayer Leverkusen in October was one of the most eye-catching results of the league phase, as was Liverpool’s stunning 5-1 victory at Frankfurt – a result that announced the Reds as genuine contenders before their semi-final exit to PSG.

Arsenal's domestic season backed up their European credentials, and then some: they finished as Premier League champions. The double was there for the taking in Budapest, which is precisely what made the penalty shootout so hard to take at the Emirates.

What the Final Meant for Both Clubs

For Arsenal, the final was the end of a 20-year journey back to the biggest stage in club football and a chance to erase the memory of their 2006 defeat to Barcelona. It did not happen. They remain the club with the most European Cup and Champions League appearances without ever lifting the trophy, and the shootout was the only blemish on a season that still brought them the Premier League title. Kai Havertz became just the third player to score in a Champions League final for two different clubs, after Cristiano Ronaldo and Mario Mandžukić, and at 19 years and 246 days Myles Lewis-Skelly became the second-youngest Englishman ever to start one.

For PSG the prize was immortality, and they took it. Marquinhos, Désiré Doué and Achraf Hakimi all became two-time European champions inside twelve months, and a club that had spent a decade being defined by its failures in this competition now has a case as one of the great European sides of the era.

The 2026/27 Champions League Is Already Under Way

The 72nd season of the competition, and the third under the 36-team league phase, kicked off on 8 September 2026 after the draw at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco on 27 August. The eight matchdays run through to 27 January 2027, the knockout play-offs follow in February, and the final is at Atlético de Madrid's Estadio Metropolitano on 5 June 2027. That will be the sixth European Cup final Madrid has hosted, and the second at the Metropolitano after Liverpool beat Tottenham there in 2019.

PSG opened their defence at home to Slovan Bratislava. Arsenal, now Premier League champions, drew one of the harder schedules in the pot, with Real Madrid, Bayern München, Borussia Dortmund and Napoli all among their eight opponents. Four clubs are new to this stage of the competition: Sabah, Como, Viking and LASK. Sabah's is the story worth following, an Azerbaijani club founded in 2017 that has reached the Champions League in nine years and joins Qarabağ as the only side from the country ever to make the competition proper.

A new season means eight more matchdays of late kick-offs. A DAZN gift card covers the streaming side in the markets where it carries European football, and a PlayStation gift card covers FC points and the rest of the PS Store if your football mostly happens on the sofa.

Budapest belongs to Paris now. Madrid decides the next one on 5 June 2027, with 36 clubs and eight matchdays to get through first. If you are stocking up for the season ahead, you can browse sports gift cards.