Arsenal turn Piero Hincapié’s loan into a permanent £34.5m deal
Arsenal have activated their option to sign Piero Hincapié from Bayer Leverkusen for a reported £34.5 million, handing the Ecuador defender a five-year deal after his title-winning loan.
Jul 1, 2026
Piero Hincapié is an Arsenal player for keeps. The champions have taken up their option to sign the Ecuador defender permanently from Bayer Leverkusen, ending a loan spell that quietly became one of the smarter calls of their title-winning season.
The 24-year-old has signed a five-year contract that keeps him at the club until 2031. Arsenal will pay a reported £34.5 million, with add-ons on top, for a player who arrived last summer as squad depth and finished the campaign as a defender Mikel Arteta trusted across the back line.
A loan that earned its stay
Hincapié played 39 times in all competitions in 2025-26, 20 of them Premier League starts, as Arsenal ended a 22-year wait for the title. Comfortable at centre-back or left-back, he gave Arteta a defender who could fill whichever gap the injuries opened up. The team’s numbers made the case for him too. Arsenal conceded fewer goals than anyone else in the Premier League for a second season running, a league-low 27, and David Raya kept 19 clean sheets to match the club record.
First move of the summer
Turning the loan permanent is the first piece of Arsenal’s business before the 2026-27 season, and it is about as clean as transfers get. There was no bidding war to win and no selling club to talk round, only an option the club had always planned to use. For a defender who has already handled the pressure of an Arsenal title run, it looks like sensible money before the trickier decisions of the window arrive.