By Tony Attwood
Now of course, you will know your Arsenal history, and know that Arsenal were formed in 1886, meaning that 2026 is not really a big anniversary season. It’s 130 years. But before you turn away thinking this article is a con let me lead you a little further.
For this season, 2025/26 has been Arsenal’s 100th consecutive season in the top flight of English football – something that no other club is anywhere near achieving. And indeed if you have been to this site before, you will know that we are celebrating 100 consecutive seasons in the top division, in a way that no other website is doing.
For what we are doing is tracing the history of the club through that century of seasons which began with Arsenal’s election to the top division for the 1919/1920 season.
Now of course, not every season has been played since then, as a world war got in the way, but if you count the actual seasons being played, then you will find that the current season, which is just coming to a close, is the 100th consecutive season in the top division (ie the 1st Division and then the Premier League).
And how wonderful and appropriate it is that in this season that is now coming to an end, Arsenal should indeed win the league. It is the 14th time that the club has won the League.
Thus this is a series of wins in the top division that goes back to the 1930s. Arsenal joined the first division after the first world war, when the league was expanded by two clubs, in part as a way of rectifying the wrongs done due to the notorious match fixing affair at the end of the final pre-war season. To overcome that problem, it was agreed to elect one relegated club back to the top division to compensate it for the match fixing, and then, because the league needed to have an even number of clubs within it, to ensure every club had a fixture each Saturday, a second club was to be elected.
That club was The Arsenal, as it was known, and some fifty years after the event, stories began to emerge that somehow Arsenal had fixed or bought their way into the top division. No evidence has even been produced to support such a claim, while the reason that so many other clubs voted Arsenal into the 1st division are clear, and have been reproduced on this site.
So Arsenal were elected to the first division in 1919, and have played there ever since, except during the years of the Second World War. No other club has come anywhere near that record of 100 consecutive seasons in the top league.
And so we reach 2025/26, the 100th consecutive season of Arsenal in the top division – a record that we are celebrating in the current series. And how utterly wonderful and appropriate it is that in this 100th season, Arsenal have once again won the league.
Of course, when we decided to start the process of celebrating 100 seasons in the top division, we had no thought about this not only being the 100th anniversary but also the season in which Arsenal won the league for the first time since the Unbeaten Season. But here we are.
Sadly, the media, and come to that Arsenal FC itself, don’t go in for much historic celebration – although I am not sure why. So although the club was informed that this was the 100th consecutive season in the top division, they declined to put on any celebration…. which leaves Arsenal History Society and of course, Untold Arsenal, out on our own celebrating 100 seasons in the top division and the fact that in the 100th season, Arsenal won the league.
We’re members of Arsenal Independent Supporters Association, but beyond that we don’t have any formal association with the club. But at least we can claim a unique feature to our work. We celebrated winning the league in the 100th consecutive season in the top division which I don’t think Arsenal FC have done – or at least not done until we told them.
