PSG trigger Digne’s release clause to take him back to Paris
The France left-back has passed a medical after PSG paid a clause worth a fraction of what Aston Villa once spent on him.
Jul 21, 2026
Paris Saint-Germain have gone back for Lucas Digne. The France left-back has passed a medical and is set to sign a three-year deal at the Parc des Princes after PSG paid the release clause written into his Aston Villa contract, a clause reported at around 10 million euros. A decade after Barcelona signed him away, he is a PSG player again.
A clause that did the work
The fee is the story here. Digne signed a contract extension at Villa Park last season that ran to 2028, and tucked inside it was a release clause of roughly 10 million euros. Once PSG decided they wanted him, Villa had no say in it. For a France international who has started regularly in the Premier League, that is a modest sum, and it is a long way short of the 25 million pounds Villa paid Everton for him in January 2022.
Digne agreed personal terms quickly. His new deal runs to 2029, which takes him to 36.
Why PSG want him
Nuno Mendes is the first-choice left-back and nothing about this signing changes that. What PSG lacked was a senior alternative, and last season exposed it whenever Mendes was unavailable. Digne arrives as cover with a guarantee of some game time from Luis Enrique, which is the sort of promise a 33-year-old needs before agreeing to be a deputy.
He turned 33 on July 20, the day before the move was finalised. That is not young for a full-back, but Digne’s game has never depended on raw pace, and his delivery from wide areas remains among the better returns in the Premier League. For a squad playing deep into every competition it enters, a left-back who can start 20-odd matches without the level dropping has real value.
Back where he started, sort of
Digne first joined PSG from Lille in 2013 and never quite settled. He spent the 2015-16 season on loan at Roma before Barcelona signed him permanently in July 2016, and he did not become a fixture anywhere until Everton, where he made 113 appearances and turned into one of the league’s better attacking full-backs. Villa followed, and so did the France recall.
Returning to a club that once could not find room for you is a particular kind of second chance. The PSG he rejoins is a far more coherent side than the one he left, and the role on offer is honest: play when Mendes cannot, do it well, do not complain.
What Villa lose
Villa have had a busy window and this is another senior departure from a squad already in flux. Losing a first-choice left-back for 10 million euros is not the business Unai Emery would have chosen, but a release clause is a release clause. The replacement search becomes urgent with the Premier League season closing in.
It is a strange time to be losing him. Villa beat Freiburg 3-0 in Istanbul on May 20 to win the Europa League, the first in the club’s history and the high point of Emery’s tenure, and it was Digne’s corner that Youri Tielemans volleyed in for the opening goal. Two months on, the squad that won it is being picked apart piece by piece.
For Digne the ending is clean enough: four and a half years at Villa Park, a rebuilt reputation, a European trophy he had a hand in, and a move home on his own terms.