Premier League 2025/26 Awards: Player of the Season, Fan Team and Best XI

2025/26 Premier League award winners at a glance

The season produced several legitimate “winner” labels, but each answered a different question. The table below covers the main individual, managerial, statistical and single-moment Premier League honours needed to understand the 2025/26 awards picture. It is not a list of every monthly or community prize. Read the final column before comparing winners: a combined vote for an outstanding performer is fundamentally different from leading the league in a counted statistic.

The three Golden awards are leaderboard outcomes. Haaland's 27 goals, Raya's 19 clean sheets and Fernandes's 21 assists determined those prizes; they were not chosen as an overall best-player poll. Goal and Save of the Season work differently: Reed's long-range Fulham strike against Liverpool and Pickford's late reaction save for Everton at Newcastle received the most combined votes from the public and an expert panel. A player can therefore win one category without that result deciding another.

Team success still supplies important context without mechanically deciding every honour. Arsenal won the league on 85 points, seven clear of Manchester City, and Arteta received Manager of the Season. Yet the overall player award went to Manchester United's Fernandes. That combination is possible because voters assess an individual shortlist, not simply the first-place club badge. The 2025/26 final standings archive provides the complete team results behind these selections.

Bruno Fernandes: EA SPORTS Player of the Season

Fernandes won this Premier League award for the first time after topping an eight-player shortlist. The result is the official league's overall player honour, decided by combined input from the public, all 20 club captains and an expert panel. That matters when a search page calls him “player of the season”: it should identify the EA SPORTS Premier League award, not silently substitute the separate FWA or PFA prizes.

The timing of the source matters too. The original winner story was published before the final record was complete and discussed 20 assists. The Premier League's completed-season roundup records the final league line: nine goals and a record 21 assists, with Manchester United finishing third and qualifying for the Champions League. Those are the figures used below. The final table archive supplies the completed team context rather than a shortlist-day snapshot.

Player of the Season and Playmaker are different awards

Player of the Season asks which shortlisted performer had the strongest overall campaign and combines three voting groups. Playmaker asks a narrower statistical question: who supplied the most Premier League assists? Fernandes could win both because his season satisfied both tests, but the Playmaker trophy did not automatically confer the overall award. A goalkeeper, defender or scorer could still win Player of the Season without leading the assists table.

The gap in the assists race was substantial. Fernandes ended with 21, a new Premier League single-season record, while Manchester City's Rayan Cherki was next on 12. That nine-assist margin settled Playmaker without a subjective ranking of leadership, difficulty or all-round influence. The overall award could consider those qualities through its public, captain and expert votes, alongside the same production.

Use “Fernandes won the 2025/26 Player of the Season and Playmaker awards,” not “the assists title made him Player of the Season.” The first statement reports two confirmed outcomes; the second invents a decision rule.

The final numbers behind Fernandes's double

Fernandes finished the 2025/26 Premier League season with nine goals and 21 assists. That is 30 direct goal contributions in league play, not a total padded with FA Cup, EFL Cup or European matches. The completed-season figures matter because the Player of the Season announcement was published before the final match, when his listed totals were still slightly lower.

His 21 assists also established a new single-season Premier League record, moving beyond the previous mark of 20 shared by Thierry Henry and Kevin De Bruyne. Manchester United's third-place finish supplied the team context for that production. It is fair to see those numbers as powerful evidence for his Player of the Season case, but they were not an automatic scoring formula: that award still came from the combined public, club-captain and expert-panel process.

Fernandes then appeared in the official Fan Team of the Season as one of its three midfielders. That recognition came through a different route again: supporters built an XI from the positional shortlist, and the highest-voted eligible players made the final team. The inclusion therefore reinforces how broadly his season was admired without turning the Fan Team into a second expert-judged Player of the Season award.

Nico O'Reilly: Young Player of the Season

Manchester City's Nico O'Reilly won the 2025/26 Premier League Young Player of the Season award from an eight-player shortlist. The eligibility test was precise: nominees had to be aged 21 or under at the start of the campaign. It was not an award restricted to players who were still 21 on announcement day. Supporter votes were combined with those of a football-expert panel to decide the winner, a different electorate from the one used for the senior EA SPORTS Player of the Season.

The completed league record gives the result useful context. O'Reilly made 34 Premier League appearances, scored five goals, supplied three assists and played a part in nine clean sheets. Those are league-only figures; his goals in the EFL Cup final and his FA Cup involvement belong to separate competitions and should not be added to this award-season summary. Readers checking the match trail can use the site's Premier League results archive rather than mixing all-competition totals into the comparison.

O'Reilly's case was broader than one attacking total. The official winner report highlighted his ability to operate in several roles, including full-back, holding midfield and central midfield, while his goals, assists and clean-sheet involvement show contributions at both ends. Even so, Young Player of the Season was not a mathematical under-21 leaderboard. His output and versatility explained why he was a compelling candidate; the combined supporter-and-expert vote, within the stated age rule and shortlist, produced the award itself.

The official 2025/26 Fan Team of the Season

The Premier League's official Fan Team was a direct supporter-selection exercise built around a 60-player shortlist. Nominees were divided into goalkeeper, defender, midfielder and forward pools, and every submitted side used a fixed 4-3-3 formation. More than 200,000 fans shared an XI. That scale makes the result a substantial public verdict, but its label remains important: it was the Fan Team, not a panel's universal best XI and not the ballot that selected the senior Player of the Season.

Supporters had until 18:00 BST on 29 May 2026 to submit a team, and the result was revealed on 30 May. The players with the most public votes in their respective positions formed the final XI. The ballot is therefore closed, even if an archived selection page still displays instructions written when voting was live. The following lineup records that completed result rather than inviting a new vote or projecting which players might win.

Why Arsenal and Manchester City dominated the XI

Arsenal supplied five of the 11 selections and Manchester City supplied three, so the season's top two clubs occupied nearly three quarters of the Fan Team. The concentration has an obvious competitive backdrop: Arsenal finished as champions with 85 points, seven clear of their closest challengers. Still, the final 2025/26 table did not automatically allocate places. Every player had to win enough support within his positional ballot.

Arsenal's representation was especially defensive. David Raya stood behind Jurrien Timber, William Saliba and Gabriel Magalhaes, while Declan Rice supplied the fifth place in midfield. Raya's 19 clean sheets earned the Golden Glove and gave voters a clear completed-season measure to consider. His 2025/26 prize was a third successive Golden Glove, although the preceding season's award was shared. The Fan Team nevertheless selected individuals rather than importing Arsenal's defensive unit by rule.

City's three were Nico O'Reilly, Erling Haaland and Antoine Semenyo. O'Reilly had already won Young Player of the Season, while Haaland's 27 league goals secured the Golden Boot. Those separate honours help explain why their campaigns stood out, but neither trophy guaranteed a Fan Team slot. Semenyo's inclusion is another reminder that the XI measured public preference within the shortlist and formation, not merely the winners of the league's headline individual awards.

Why there is no single universal 2025/26 best XI

A “2025/26 Team of the Season” can refer to several defensible but different products. The Premier League Fan Team reflects direct public choices from a positional shortlist. PremierLeague.com also published four separate XIs chosen by Alan Shearer, Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher and Michael Owen. Fantasy Premier League produced another team by looking at the highest-scoring players across all 38 Gameweeks. Each lineup answers its own question, so disagreements between the names are expected rather than evidence that one page is necessarily wrong.

The safest comparison rule is to attach both selector and method to every XI. Say “Premier League Fan Team” for the public ballot, “Shearer's XI” for his judgment and “FPL Team of the Season” for the fantasy-points exercise. Publication on an official league website authenticates what was published; it does not merge public preference, expert opinion and fantasy scoring into one universal sporting verdict. The next two comparisons show how those boundaries change the lineup.

Fan Team versus pundit selections

The public result and the four pundit teams shared a strong six-player core: David Raya, Gabriel Magalhaes, Nico O'Reilly, Declan Rice, Bruno Fernandes and Antoine Semenyo appeared in all five lineups. That overlap is a useful sign of broad recognition across very different selection routes. It is a comparison derived from the published XIs, though, not a fifth award or an official consensus ranking.

The differences are just as revealing. Alan Shearer selected Marcos Senesi in a defensive place where the Fan Team included William Saliba. Michael Owen left out Golden Boot winner Erling Haaland, even though Haaland made the public XI and the other three pundit teams. Such calls are possible because each pundit was naming a personal side; supporters, by contrast, collectively determined the Fan Team through aggregated positional votes.

Attribution rule: call each lineup “Shearer's Team,” “Neville's Team,” “Carragher's Team” or “Owen's Team.” Do not shorten an individual pundit's selection to “the official best XI” merely because PremierLeague.com published it.

FPL Team versus EA SPORTS FC 26 TOTS

The FPL Team of the Season is a rules-based fantasy lineup: it collects the top-scoring players across all 38 Fantasy Premier League Gameweeks. EA SPORTS FC 26 TOTS belongs to a different environment altogether. Electronic Arts presented it as Team of the Season content for Football Ultimate Team, with the Premier League release scheduled for 24 April 2026. Neither product used the Premier League Fan Team's direct positional ballot.

Fantasy scoring rewards actions according to the game's points rules, player classifications, minutes, clean sheets, bonus points and attacking returns. Haaland led the published 2025/26 FPL team on 239 points, narrowly ahead of Fernandes on 235. Those numbers are exact and useful within FPL; they are not a universal conversion of every footballer's season into objective quality. A tactical role that produces fewer fantasy returns can still attract a pundit or supporter selection.

Timing creates an even clearer boundary for FC 26. Its Premier League TOTS drop arrived on 24 April, before the league campaign had finished and before the final Fan Team was revealed on 30 May. The cards celebrate players inside an EA game mode; they cannot be cited as the league's completed end-of-season award result. When a search page says “EA TOTS,” check whether “EA” refers to Football Ultimate Team content rather than the EA SPORTS-sponsored Premier League Player of the Season award.

PFA, FWA and game awards are separate

Three similar labels can hide three different decision-makers. The Professional Footballers' Association's Players' Player awards are peer-driven: PFA members vote for fellow players within their own league. The Football Writers' Association Footballer of the Year comes from a ballot of FWA members. The Premier League's EA SPORTS Player of the Season is the league award discussed above, with its own supporter-and-expert process. Fernandes was a confirmed 2025/26 FWA winner and the confirmed Premier League Player of the Season, but those victories do not automatically settle the PFA vote.

The PFA result is also time-sensitive. As of this article's 13 August 2026 cutoff, the PFA had published a men's Top Six of Rayan Cherki, Bruno Fernandes, Erling Haaland, Gabriel Magalhaes, David Raya and Declan Rice. Its announcement said winners would be honoured at the PFA Awards on Tuesday, 25 August 2026. It did not provide a final 2026 Players' Player winner or 2025/26 PFA Team of the Year to report at this cutoff. Any page naming those outcomes before official confirmation is prediction, not a completed result; readers arriving after the ceremony should recheck the PFA's own awards pages.

A second collision comes from the letters “EA.” EA SPORTS sponsors the Premier League's Player of the Season award, while EA SPORTS FC 26 TOTS is Football Ultimate Team content inside a video game. The common brand does not mean the league vote selected the cards, or that an FC 26 lineup became the Premier League's official Fan Team. Always look beyond the label to the organizer, electorate, release date and product. That four-part check prevents most award-system mix-ups.

How to verify a 2025/26 award claim

An official page can announce a shortlist, host an open vote, declare a winner or summarize a completed season. Those statuses are not interchangeable. A reliable check starts by opening the first-party page instead of trusting a search snippet, then identifying exactly who ran the award and when the page was updated. Archived ballot instructions are especially easy to mistake for a current vote after the result exists.

1. Identify the organizer. Premier League, PFA, FWA, FPL and EA SPORTS FC are separate publishers or products.
2. Copy the exact award title. “Player,” “Young Player,” “Playmaker,” “Fan Team” and “PFA Players' Player” are not synonyms.
3. Record the selector and method. Look for public voting, experts, club captains, peers, writers or a statistical leaderboard.
4. Check the status language. “Nominee,” “vote,” “winner” and “will be honoured” describe different stages.
5. Compare the date with the season endpoint. Use a completed roundup or the site's final results for final performance totals.

Fernandes supplies a practical example. His official Player of the Season winner story was published while one league match remained and described 20 assists; the completed-season roundup records 21 after he set the outright record in the final fixture. The award identity was already settled, while the supporting season statistic changed. Conversely, the PFA's 4 June article was authoritative about its Top Six and 25 August ceremony date but was not yet a final winner announcement at the 13 August cutoff. Verification means preserving both kinds of timing.

Frequently asked questions

These quick answers use the Premier League's completed 2025/26 roundup and final Fan Team announcement. They distinguish voted honours from the Golden awards based on goals, clean sheets and assists, and they keep the public Fan Team separate from other organizations' best-XI products.

The status cutoff is 13 August 2026. By then the league results covered below were final, while the PFA had announced Top Six shortlists and a 25 August awards date rather than final 2026 winners. That date matters if you are comparing this archive with a later PFA announcement.

Who won Premier League Player of the Season in 2025/26?

Bruno Fernandes of Manchester United won the 2025/26 EA SPORTS Player of the Season, his first victory in the league's senior season award. He finished the completed Premier League campaign with nine goals and a record 21 assists. This answer refers specifically to the Premier League award; the FWA Footballer of the Year and PFA Players' Player of the Year are separate honours with different electorates.

What was the official Premier League Fan Team of the Season for 2025/26?

The public-selected 4-3-3 was David Raya; Jurrien Timber, William Saliba, Gabriel Magalhaes and Nico O'Reilly; Dominik Szoboszlai, Declan Rice and Bruno Fernandes; Igor Thiago, Erling Haaland and Antoine Semenyo. More than 200,000 supporter selections determined the highest-voted players in their respective positions. This was the Premier League's official Fan Team result, not the PFA Team of the Year or a universal consensus XI.

Who won the 2025/26 Golden Boot, Golden Glove and Playmaker awards?

Erling Haaland won the Golden Boot with 27 Premier League goals. David Raya won the Golden Glove with 19 clean sheets, and Bruno Fernandes won the Playmaker award with a league-record 21 assists. These results came from the completed goals, clean-sheets and assists leaderboards. They were statistical awards, not three popularity votes, even though the same players could also receive recognition in separately voted season honours.

Is the PFA Team of the Year the same as the Premier League Fan Team?

No. The Premier League Fan Team is selected by public positional votes, while the PFA Team of the Year is a peer-voted Professional Footballers' Association lineup. At the 13 August 2026 cutoff, the Fan Team above was final but the PFA's current 2026 source had announced Top Six individual-award shortlists and said winners would be honoured on 25 August; it had not supplied a final 2025/26 PFA XI. Check a later PFA announcement rather than substituting a previous season's team.