The Premier League spent £3.48bn this summer, and the other four big leagues combined spent less
A record window closed at 11pm on Tuesday. The gross figure beat last year’s record by nearly £300m, and £2.17bn of it came straight back through sales.
Sep 2, 2026
The window shut at 11pm on Tuesday night and the number that came out of it was £3.48 billion. That is what the 20 Premier League clubs spent on players over the summer, on Sky Sports’ running count, and it clears the £3.19 billion they spent last year, which was itself a record. English football has now put more than £2 billion into the transfer market in each of the last four summers.
The rest of Europe was not in the same conversation
Serie A clubs spent £843.6 million. LaLiga spent £603.1 million, the Bundesliga £507.6 million, Ligue 1 £490.6 million. Put all four leagues together and the total is around £2.44 billion, which is roughly a billion pounds less than the Premier League managed by itself. Ligue 1 came out of the summer £467 million up, having sold nearly a billion pounds of players.
Selling is now half the job
The gross figure only tells you what went out. Premier League clubs pulled £2.17 billion back in through sales, so the net spend was £1.30 billion. Chelsea are the clearest example of how that works now: £342.4 million spent, £409.7 million recouped, and a £67.3 million profit on the summer despite being one of the three biggest buyers in the league. Liverpool were the biggest net spender at £219.4 million. Manchester City topped the gross table on £440.3 million.
The deals that set the ceiling
Enzo Fernandez went from Chelsea to Manchester City for £125 million on a five-year contract, which puts him level with the fee Liverpool paid Newcastle for Alexander Isak in 2025. Morgan Rogers moved the other way, Aston Villa to Chelsea for £117 million, and became the most expensive British player there has been. The biggest fee outside England went to RB Leipzig, who sold Yan Diomande to Real Madrid for around £120 million. Diomande is 19, plays on the wing for Ivory Coast, and Madrid have him under contract until 2033.
Money does not guarantee a squad
Spending big and finishing the window well are not the same thing, and Everton proved it on Tuesday. They sold Beto to Fiorentina and Iliman Ndiaye to Manchester City, agreed £40 million with Monaco for Folarin Balogun, and then watched him walk away after midnight when the medical raised questions. Their loan enquiries for Joshua Zirkzee and Tammy Abraham both failed. A summer of activity in a record-breaking market left David Moyes with one recognised centre-forward for the season.