Longest Unbeaten Run in Premier League

Arsenal hold the record for the longest unbeaten run in Premier League history at 49 matches, stretching from a 6-1 win at Southampton on 7 May 2003 to a 2-0 defeat at Manchester United on 16 October 2004. The streak swallowed the entire unbeaten 2003-04 “Invincibles” season, still the only title-winning campaign in league history without a single loss.

Going nearly 17 months without defeat means surviving injuries, refereeing decisions and off-days without ever cracking. Below is the verified leaderboard of the ten longest unbeaten runs in Premier League history, how each one ended, and how close anyone has come to Arsenal’s mark since.

The full leaderboard: top 10 longest unbeaten runs

All figures below are Premier League matches only and are cross-checked against Opta Analyst and Premier League official records.

Rank	Club	Games unbeaten	Span	How it ended
1	Arsenal	49	May 2003 – Oct 2004	Lost 2-0 at Manchester United
2	Liverpool	44	Jan 2019 – Feb 2020	Lost 3-0 at Watford
3	Chelsea	40	Oct 2004 – Oct 2005	Lost 1-0 at Manchester United
4	Manchester City	32	Dec 2023 – Nov 2024	Lost 2-1 at Bournemouth
5	Manchester City	30	Apr 2017 – Jan 2018	Lost 4-3 at Liverpool
6	Arsenal	30	Dec 2001 – Oct 2002	Club record before the 49-game run
7	Manchester United	29	Dec 1998 – Sep 1999	During the treble-winning season
8	Chelsea	29	Dec 2007 – Oct 2008	Ended in the 2008-09 season
9	Manchester United	29	Apr 2010 – Feb 2011	Ended in the 2010-11 season
10	Liverpool	26	Sep 2024 – Apr 2025	Arne Slot’s title-winning first season

Arsenal and Manchester City each appear twice, a sign that consistency at this level tends to cluster around a small handful of dominant sides rather than being spread evenly across the league.

Arsenal’s 49: the record and the Invincibles inside it

The heart of Arsenal’s run is the 2003-04 season itself: 26 wins, 12 draws, zero defeats across all 38 league games under Arsene Wenger, a campaign that earned the “Invincibles” nickname and remains the only unbeaten title in Premier League history. The streak actually started the season before, in May 2003, and continued into the following autumn before Manchester United finally won 2-0 at Old Trafford — a game later remembered as the “Battle of the Buffet” for the chaos that followed the final whistle. No club has gone longer than 32 games unbeaten since.

Liverpool and Chelsea: the closest challengers

Liverpool’s 44-match run under Jurgen Klopp is the nearest anyone has come to Arsenal’s mark, running from January 2019 through to February 2020 and overlapping with the club’s first league title in three decades. It ended in a genuine shock, a 3-0 loss at a struggling Watford side, just weeks before Liverpool were confirmed champions. Chelsea’s 40-game run under Jose Mourinho, the club’s early-Roman Abramovich era, is third overall and remains the longest of any side not managed by Wenger or Klopp; it ended 1-0 at Manchester United when midfielder Darren Fletcher scored the only goal of the game.

Manchester City’s modern record

Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City hold the longest unbeaten run of the last two decades outside Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea: 32 games between December 2023 and November 2024, a run that finally ended with a 2-1 loss at Bournemouth — City’s first-ever league defeat to that club. City also hold a second entry on the leaderboard, a 30-game run from 2017-18 that Liverpool ended with a 4-3 win at Anfield, one of the most chaotic results of the Guardiola era.

Why the record is so hard to break — and the 2026 chase

Staying unbeaten for a full season, let alone longer, requires a squad deep enough to absorb injuries and suspensions without a drop-off, plus a fair amount of luck avoiding refereeing errors and freak results. That combination is why Arsenal’s 49 has stood for more than two decades despite three genuine title-winning dynasties — Mourinho’s Chelsea, Klopp’s Liverpool, Guardiola’s City — all falling short. As of the 2025-26 season, the best unbeaten run in the Premier League belonged to Bournemouth at 13 matches, still 36 games shy of Arsenal’s record, and no side has topped Manchester City’s 32-game mark since it ended in November 2024.

Related Premier League records

Arsenal’s unbeaten run sits alongside a cluster of other Invincibles-era numbers, from goals scored to clean sheets kept. For the attacking and defensive marks from dominant Premier League campaigns, see our leaderboards on the most goals in a Premier League season and the most clean sheets in the Premier League. Single-match scoring extremes are covered in our most goals in a Premier League game list, and the wider record book is indexed on our Premier League records hub.

Arsenal hold the longest unbeaten run in Premier League history at 49 matches (2003-04), with Liverpool’s 44-game run under Klopp second and Chelsea’s 40-game run under Mourinho third. Manchester City’s 32 games from 2023-24 is the longest since. Arsenal’s 2003-04 Invincibles season remains the only unbeaten campaign in league history, and as of the 2025-26 season no side has come within 15 games of the record.