Coventry City’s 95-point title win in 2025-26 ended a 25-year wait for Premier League football at the club, and it capped off one of the most competitive stretches the Championship has produced in years. Anyone browsing Championship odds for next season’s promotion race is looking at a division that has sent up a different champion every year for the last half decade, each with a story worth knowing.
Each of the last five title winners arrived at the top of the Championship in a different way, and what happened to them afterwards tells its own story. Here’s a look at the five most recent champions, their points totals, top scorers, a touch of club history and where they stand now.
Coventry City, 2025-26
Frank Lampard’s side won the title with 95 points, scoring 97 goals along the way, comfortably the most in the division. Haji Wright led the goalscoring with 17 in the league, and Coventry’s promotion ended a wait stretching back to their last Premier League season in 2000-01, having spent much of the years in between bouncing between League One and the Championship. They return to the top flight for 2026-27 aiming to avoid the fate of several recent promoted sides.
Leeds United, 2024-25
Leeds finished on 100 points under Daniel Farke, level with second-placed Burnley but champions on goal difference. Joel Piroe was the club’s and the division’s top scorer with 19 goals. It was Leeds’ second Championship title and came after two consecutive seasons outside the top flight. They stayed up comfortably in 2025-26 with a 14th place finish and remain in the Premier League heading into this season.
Leicester City, 2023-24
Enzo Maresca’s Leicester won the title at a canter with 97 points, with Jamie Vardy top scoring on 18 goals as the veteran forward helped the club straight back up after relegation. For those tracking free bets around promotion and relegation markets, Leicester’s subsequent fall is worth noting.
They were relegated from the Premier League again in 2024-25, then relegated a second time straight into League One in 2025-26, a rapid decline from their 2015-16 Premier League title-winning peak.
Burnley, 2022-23
Vincent Kompany’s Burnley racked up 101 points in his first season as a manager in England, losing just three of 46 games and setting a Championship record by sealing promotion with seven matches still to play.
No single player dominated the scoring column, with Jay Rodriguez, Nathan Tella and Manuel Benson all reaching double figures. Burnley were relegated after one Premier League season in 2023-24, were automatically promoted from the Championship again in 2024-25, then went straight back down from the Premier League once more in 2025-26.
Fulham, 2021-22
Fulham’s 90-point title came with Aleksandar Mitrovic scoring 43 goals, the joint-highest single season tally in Championship history. It was the third second-tier title in the club’s history, following earlier promotions under Jean Tigana and Roy Hodgson.
The Cottagers have since become one of the more settled clubs in the Premier League, avoiding relegation in every season since their promotion and establishing themselves as a regular top-half finisher at Craven Cottage.
These five champions show just how unpredictable life in and out of the Championship can be, with promotion sometimes marking the start of stability and, for others, the beginning of a much longer struggle.
