Arsenal celebrate first Premier League title in 22 years with parade
Arsenal’s first league title in 22 years spilled through Islington on four open-top buses, with hundreds of thousands expected and Declan Rice rapping as the city celebrated.
Arsenal turned north London into a title procession on Sunday as the club marked its first Premier League championship in 22 years with a parade through Islington, the borough that anchors its identity. Four open-top buses moved through the streets behind a Champions truck carrying DJs, with the Premier League winners on the lead bus and the women’s team, holding the FIFA Women’s Champions Cup, among the groups joining the celebration.
Arsenal set the parade to begin at 2pm and said hundreds of thousands of supporters were expected to line the route. The club streamed the event live on Arsenal.com, The Arsenal app, YouTube, Facebook and X, extending the scene far beyond Islington as Mikel Arteta’s side, staff and fans filled a day that felt equal parts sporting triumph and civic ritual.
The logistics reshaped the area before the first bus rolled. Arsenal warned that no parking would be allowed on the parade route or side roads from 4am on Sunday, and told residents that vehicles left on the route could be removed. The final bus in the procession was reserved for the club’s community and staff nominees, underlining how the celebration was built not only around the squad, but around the wider institution that supports it.
The scale of the response matched the weight of the title. Arsenal last won the league in 2003/04, when Arsène Wenger’s Invincibles went through the season unbeaten with 26 wins and 12 draws and finished 11 points clear. The new champions had spent the previous three seasons finishing second, including 2023/24, when Manchester City beat them by two points. For supporters who still measure modern Arsenal against Highbury and that unbeaten team, the 2026 parade carried the force of a long-delayed reckoning.
The celebrations came after Arsenal’s Champions League final against Paris Saint-Germain in Budapest on Saturday at 5pm UK time, giving the club a defining weekend on two fronts. During the parade, Declan Rice was filmed singing and rapping along to Ice Ice Baby as the bus rolled through north London, a moment that captured the looseness of the celebration after years of near misses. For Arsenal, the parade was more than a victory lap. It was a public declaration that the club’s football project, its fan base and its place in the city had entered a new phase.
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