In this guide
Key TakeawaysThe 2026 Answer in One TableHow the Counting WorksWhat 2025-26 Added to the Record BooksBefore 1892: When Wanderers Ruled England1892 to 1992: The Century That Built Liverpool's LeadThe Premier League Years: United's Wall, City's Decade, Arsenal's ReturnLeague Titles: Two Clubs on 20, and Arsenal Finally MovingFA Cup: Arsenal's Record, City's Fourth Straight FinalLeague Cup: Liverpool's Ten Holding Off City's NineCommunity Shield: The Quiet 21 That Props Up United's TotalThe European Ledger: Liverpool's Six and a Final That HurtEuropa League and Conference League: Two New English Names in One MonthWorld Titles: United and Chelsea Share the English LeadVerdict: Liverpool Lead, but the Board Is Moving AgainFrequently Asked QuestionsLiverpool are the most successful club in England with 70 major competitive honours, two clear of Manchester United on 68, and nothing that happened in 2025-26 changed the top of the table. What did change is everything underneath it. Arsenal ended a 22-year wait for the title, Manchester City won both domestic cups in the same season for the second time, Aston Villa lifted their first European trophy since 1982 and Crystal Palace won the Conference League a year after their first FA Cup.
This count has been rebuilt from scratch for the 2026-27 season using the records kept by the Premier League, the EFL, the FA and UEFA, cross-checked against club honours lists. If a trophy in this article catches your eye, every competition and club named here is bookable through 1BoxOffice, a secondary marketplace running since 2006.
Key Takeaways
- Liverpool top English football with 70 major honours, two clear of Manchester United on 68, and neither club added a trophy in 2025-26.
- Arsenal are the season's big movers, climbing from 48 to 50 after a 14th league title and the 2026 Community Shield, and now sit clear in third.
- Manchester City won both domestic cups in 2025-26, an eighth FA Cup and a ninth League Cup, lifting their total from 36 to 38.
- Liverpool and United share the record of 20 English league titles, while United still dominate the Premier League era 13 to 2.
- Aston Villa's first Europa League and Crystal Palace's first Conference League gave England two new European trophy winners in the same week.
- Remove the Community Shield from the count and Liverpool's lead over United grows from two honours to six, 53 against 47.
The 2026 Answer in One Table
Here is the full ledger before any era-by-era argument. Totals combine top-flight league titles, the FA Cup, the League Cup, the Community Shield including shared editions, every European trophy and recognised club world titles. Liverpool's figure also includes two one-off honours explained in the methodology below.
| Club | League | FA Cup | League Cup | Shield | European | World | Other | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Liverpool | 20 | 8 | 10 | 16 | 13 | 1 | 2 | 70 |
| Manchester United | 20 | 13 | 6 | 21 | 6 | 2 | 0 | 68 |
| Arsenal | 14 | 14 | 2 | 18 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 50 |
| Manchester City | 10 | 8 | 9 | 7 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 38 |
| Chelsea | 6 | 8 | 5 | 4 | 9 | 2 | 0 | 34 |
| Tottenham Hotspur | 2 | 8 | 4 | 7 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 25 |
| Everton | 9 | 5 | 0 | 9 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 24 |
| Aston Villa | 7 | 7 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 23 |
| Newcastle United | 4 | 6 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 13 |
The two-trophy gap at the top has held for a full season. The story of 2025-26 is the chasing pack: Arsenal moved from 48 to 50, City from 36 to 38 and Villa from 22 to 23, while the two clubs above them added nothing.
How the Counting Works
Every honours debate collapses without a fixed method, so this one is stated up front. A trophy counts here if it was a first-team competitive honour recognised by the FA, the EFL, the Premier League, UEFA or world football's governing body. That means:
- Top-flight league titles, combining the First Division from 1888 and the Premier League from 1992, since both are the championship of England.
- The FA Cup and the League Cup in all their sponsored guises.
- The Community Shield and its Charity Shield predecessor, with shared editions counted for both clubs, plus the 1906 Sheriff of London Charity Shield held by Liverpool.
- Every UEFA trophy: the European Cup and Champions League, the UEFA Cup and Europa League with the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup as its forerunner, the defunct Cup Winners' Cup, the Super Cup and the Conference League.
- Club world titles, meaning the Intercontinental Cup and the Club World Cup, which the world governing body now treats as a single lineage of world champions.
- Liverpool's 1986 Football League Super Cup, a one-off competition created when English clubs were banned from Europe, listed under Other.
Friendlies, wartime titles and youth or reserve honours are excluded. Strip out anything on this list and the order at the top does not change, which is the strongest sign the answer is settled rather than a quirk of counting.
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What 2025-26 Added to the Record Books
The season just finished was one of the most consequential for the honours board in a decade, even though neither of the top two won a thing. Five different English clubs collected silverware and two of them ended waits measured in decades.
| Competition | Winner | Final |
|---|---|---|
| Premier League 2025-26 | Arsenal | Sealed 19 May 2026 with a game to spare |
| FA Cup 2025-26 | Manchester City | 1-0 v Chelsea, Wembley, 16 May 2026 |
| League Cup 2025-26 | Manchester City | 2-0 v Arsenal, Wembley, 22 March 2026 |
| Community Shield 2025 | Crystal Palace | Beat Liverpool on penalties, Wembley, August 2025 |
| Community Shield 2026 | Arsenal | 3-0 v Manchester City, Cardiff, 16 August 2026 |
| Champions League 2025-26 | Paris Saint-Germain | Beat Arsenal 4-3 on penalties, Budapest, 30 May 2026 |
| Europa League 2025-26 | Aston Villa | 3-0 v Freiburg, Istanbul, 20 May 2026 |
| Conference League 2025-26 | Crystal Palace | 1-0 v Rayo Vallecano, Leipzig, 27 May 2026 |
Arsenal claimed their 14th English championship, the club's first since the Invincibles of 2003-04, then added the 2026 Community Shield with a 3-0 dismantling of City in Cardiff through Riccardo Calafiori, Kai Havertz and Martin Odegaard. The one that got away still stings: Kai Havertz put them ahead inside six minutes of the Champions League final before Paris Saint-Germain levelled and won the shootout 4-3, leaving Arsenal as the club with the most European Cup matches played without ever lifting the trophy.
Manchester City sent Pep Guardiola into retirement from the club with a domestic cup double, Nico O'Reilly's brace settling the League Cup final and Antoine Semenyo's flicked finish deciding the FA Cup final against Chelsea. Aston Villa won the Europa League 3-0 against Freiburg for their first trophy of any kind since 1996, and Crystal Palace beat Rayo Vallecano through Jean-Philippe Mateta to become the third English winners of the Conference League, their third trophy in 12 months under the departing Oliver Glasner.
Before 1892: When Wanderers Ruled England
English club football's first two decades belonged to names that mean little to a modern matchgoer. From the FA Cup's launch in 1871 until the Football League found its feet, the game's giants were amateur sides from public schools and the army.
- Wanderers won five of the first seven FA Cups, a record that stood until the 1890s, with Royal Engineers, Old Etonians and Blackburn Olympic close behind.
- Preston North End went through the entire 1888-89 season unbeaten in league and cup, the original Invincibles, winning the first Football League title without losing a match.
- Aston Villa emerged as the era's first superpower, and by 1897 had completed only the second league and cup double in history.
Freeze the clock in 1890 and the debate is Wanderers against Preston against Villa. None of it survives contact with the professional century that followed, but it explains why the FA Cup column carries so much weight in every honours list: it is the oldest prize in the world game and the only thread running through all 155 years.
1892 to 1992: The Century That Built Liverpool's Lead
The hundred years between the First Division settling into shape and the Premier League breakaway is where the modern order was written, and it was written mostly in red. Strip Premier League titles out of the all-time list and the pre-1992 championship count reads:
- Liverpool: 18 First Division titles, 11 of them packed into the Shankly, Paisley, Fagan and Dalglish years from 1964 to 1990.
- Arsenal: 10, built on Herbert Chapman's 1930s machine and the 1971 double.
- Everton: 9, the last two under Howard Kendall in 1985 and 1987.
- Manchester United: 7, five of them under Sir Matt Busby either side of Munich.
- Aston Villa and Sunderland: 7 and 6, almost all banked before the Second World War.
Europe widened the gap. Liverpool won four European Cups between 1977 and 1984 plus two UEFA Cups, while Nottingham Forest crashed the party with back-to-back European Cups in 1979 and 1980. By the time the Premier League launched, Liverpool's overall lead was so large that United needed the greatest managerial run in English history just to get within touching distance. There are more curiosities from that period in our collection of Liverpool facts, including a few the Kop rarely mentions.
The Premier League Years: United's Wall, City's Decade, Arsenal's Return
Since 1992 the championship has been shared by just eight clubs, and the distribution explains most modern arguments. Manchester United turned the competition's first two decades into a private collection, City owned the 2010s and 2020s until Liverpool and Arsenal broke through, and the full origin story is covered in our guide to how the Premier League works.
| Club | Premier League titles | Most recent |
|---|---|---|
| Manchester United | 13 | 2012-13 |
| Manchester City | 8 | 2023-24 |
| Chelsea | 5 | 2016-17 |
| Arsenal | 4 | 2025-26 |
| Liverpool | 2 | 2024-25 |
| Blackburn Rovers | 1 | 1994-95 |
| Leicester City | 1 | 2015-16 |
A common error, one this article previously made, is crediting Chelsea with six Premier League titles. They have five; the sixth championship on their record is the 1955 First Division. The Premier League era also rewrote the cup and European ledgers: Chelsea became the first club to win every major UEFA competition, City finally landed the Champions League in 2023 and Liverpool stacked cups around their 2005 and 2019 European triumphs.
League Titles: Two Clubs on 20, and Arsenal Finally Moving
The championship of England has been won 127 times and more than a third of those titles sit in two trophy rooms. Liverpool's 2024-25 crown drew them level with United on 20, and Arsenal's 2025-26 win made them the first of the chasing pack to move in years.
| Club | English top-flight titles | First | Latest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Liverpool | 20 | 1901 | 2025 |
| Manchester United | 20 | 1908 | 2013 |
| Arsenal | 14 | 1931 | 2026 |
| Manchester City | 10 | 1937 | 2024 |
| Everton | 9 | 1891 | 1987 |
| Aston Villa | 7 | 1894 | 1981 |
United fans lean on a fair point: 13 Premier League titles to Liverpool's 2 makes them the dominant club of the modern branding. Liverpool fans reply that the record books do not carve 1992 out of history. Both are right, which is why the joint record of 20 is the honest headline and why Arsenal's climb to a clear third on 14 matters more than it first appears.
FA Cup: Arsenal's Record, City's Fourth Straight Final
Arsenal remain the FA Cup's most successful club with 14 wins, seven of them under Arsene Wenger, and nobody has closed on that record recently except Manchester City. City's 1-0 win over Chelsea in May 2026, settled by Antoine Semenyo's improvised near-post flick, was their fourth consecutive final, a run no club had managed before, and lifted them to eight wins alongside Chelsea, Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur.
| Club | FA Cup wins | Latest |
|---|---|---|
| Arsenal | 14 | 2020 |
| Manchester United | 13 | 2024 |
| Chelsea | 8 | 2018 |
| Liverpool | 8 | 2022 |
| Manchester City | 8 | 2026 |
| Tottenham Hotspur | 8 | 1991 |
| Aston Villa | 7 | 1957 |
| Newcastle United | 6 | 1955 |
The competition still produces the honours board's best romance. Crystal Palace's 2025 win over City was their first major trophy in 119 years of trying, and it seeded everything that followed for the club, from the Community Shield to a European title.
League Cup: Liverpool's Ten Holding Off City's Nine
Dismissed as the third trophy for most of its life, the League Cup has quietly become the tightest record race in English football. Liverpool's ten wins, built on four in a row from 1981 to 1984 and topped up in 2022 and 2024, now sit just one clear of Manchester City after Nico O'Reilly's two headers beat Arsenal in the 2026 final.
| Club | League Cup wins | Latest |
|---|---|---|
| Liverpool | 10 | 2024 |
| Manchester City | 9 | 2026 |
| Manchester United | 6 | 2023 |
| Chelsea | 5 | 2015 |
| Aston Villa | 5 | 1996 |
The 2025 edition belongs in any modern history of the competition too: Newcastle United beat Liverpool at Wembley to end a 70-year wait for a domestic trophy, proof the cup can still carry a club's entire emotional weight for a generation.
Community Shield: The Quiet 21 That Props Up United's Total
Manchester United hold the record that gets the least airtime and does the most work in the arithmetic: 21 Community Shields, four of them shared in the era when drawn matches split the trophy. Arsenal's 3-0 win over City in Cardiff in August 2026 moved them to 18, with Liverpool on 16 and Everton on 9.
Sceptics call it a glorified friendly. The counting case is simple: it is a competitive fixture between the champions and the cup winners, staged by the FA since 1908, and every club lists it in its honours. Discount it entirely and the gap at the top of English football actually widens in Liverpool's favour, from two trophies to six, because United's shield count is the larger. It is the rare record where the holder benefits from the trophy being taken less seriously.
The European Ledger: Liverpool's Six and a Final That Hurt
No English club touches Liverpool in the Champions League and its European Cup ancestor. Six titles spanning 1977 to 2019 are double Manchester United's three, and 2025-26 kept it that way in the cruellest fashion for Arsenal, who led Paris Saint-Germain through Kai Havertz for an hour in Budapest before losing the shootout.
| Club | European Cup / UCL | UEFA Cup / UEL | Cup Winners' Cup | Super Cup | Conference League |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Liverpool | 6 | 3 | 0 | 4 | 0 |
| Manchester United | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Chelsea | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| Nottingham Forest | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Tottenham Hotspur | 0 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Aston Villa | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Manchester City | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
The table hides two of English football's better pub facts. Nottingham Forest still own more European Cups than league titles, and Chelsea's row makes them the only club anywhere to have won all five major UEFA trophies. Add the Fairs Cup forerunner and Leeds, Newcastle and Arsenal each pick up continental silverware the modern columns miss.
Europa League and Conference League: Two New English Names in One Month
May 2026 produced something the second and third tiers of European football had never seen: two English winners in the space of a week. Aston Villa dismantled Freiburg 3-0 in Istanbul through Youri Tielemans, Emiliano Buendia and Morgan Rogers to win the Europa League, their first continental prize since the 1982 European Cup and Super Cup double. Villa took the record for the longest wait between European trophies and immediately pushed PSG close in the 2026 Super Cup, losing 2-1 in Salzburg.
Seven days later Crystal Palace made it three English winners of the Conference League in five editions, after West Ham in 2023 and Chelsea in 2025, with Jean-Philippe Mateta's finish beating Rayo Vallecano in Leipzig. In the UEFA Cup lineage, Tottenham's 2025 triumph keeps them level with Liverpool on three wins apiece, the only shared record on the European board.
World Titles: United and Chelsea Share the English Lead
Counting the Intercontinental Cup and the Club World Cup as one lineage, as the world governing body now does, four English clubs have been champions of the planet. Manchester United hold the 1999 Intercontinental title, later formally recognised as a world championship, plus the 2008 Club World Cup. Chelsea matched that pair with the 2021 edition and then the expanded 2025 tournament in the United States, beating Paris Saint-Germain in the final.
Liverpool's 2019 win in Qatar and Manchester City's 2023 win in Saudi Arabia complete the English set. With the expanded tournament now on a four-year cycle, the next chance for any English club to add a world title arrives in 2029, which makes Chelsea's 2025 crown a record that cannot be touched for three more years.
Verdict: Liverpool Lead, but the Board Is Moving Again
Add every column and Liverpool top English football on 70 major honours, with Manchester United on 68, Arsenal on 50, Manchester City on 38 and Chelsea on 34. The order survives any reasonable counting method: drop the Community Shield and Liverpool lead 53 to 47, count only league titles and it is a 20-all tie, count only Europe and Liverpool's 13 stand clear of Chelsea's 9. The oldest rivalry in the English game, examined fixture by fixture in our North West derby facts, remains a two-horse race for history even while both horses stand still.
The movement is all underneath. Arsenal enter 2026-27 as champions with a two-trophy season already banked and another Champions League tilt ahead, City begin life after Guardiola under Enzo Maresca holding both domestic cups, and Villa and Palace carry their European form into the Europa League. On current trajectories, the question for the next decade is not whether Liverpool or United sit top, it is how quickly the club in third turns 50 into 55.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Which club leads England if the Community Shield is excluded?
-
Liverpool still lead on 53 honours to Manchester United's 47, so the gap actually grows without the shields.
2. Which is the most decorated club in London?
-
Arsenal lead the capital on 50 major honours, ahead of Chelsea on 34 and Tottenham Hotspur on 25.
3. Who won the first Football League title?
-
Preston North End won the inaugural 1888-89 championship without losing a match, earning the original Invincibles tag.
4. Has any club won every major UEFA trophy?
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Chelsea are the only club in Europe to have won the Champions League, Europa League, Cup Winners' Cup, Super Cup and Conference League.
5. When did Manchester United last win a major trophy?
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United's most recent major honour is the 2024 FA Cup, won 2-1 against Manchester City at Wembley.
Whoever you back in this argument, the next chapter of it is played out live every week, and 1BoxOffice has covered entry to English football's biggest fixtures since 2006 with a 150% money-back guarantee on every order.
Sources: the Premier League, The Football Association, the EFL, UEFA, Arsenal FC, Manchester City FC, Crystal Palace FC, Aston Villa FC, ESPN and Sky Sports.
