Football's Longest Winning and Losing Streaks: The All-Time Records

Most football seasons produce one or two notable winning runs, a title charge reaching 10 or 12 consecutive wins before a draw or defeat finally interrupts it. Genuine long streaks, 15 games or more, are rare and memorable. They show up in trophy counts, in the stories told about particular teams at particular moments, and in the historical record.

Our database covers 22 leagues across 33 seasons, from 1993 to 2026. Here are the longest winning and losing streaks that data contains.

The Longest Winning Streaks

1. Celtic - 25 consecutive wins, 2003-04

The all-time record in our database belongs to Celtic. Under Martin O'Neill, Celtic won 25 consecutive Scottish Premiership matches during the 2003-04 season, a run that spanned the entire second half of the campaign and secured the title with significant margin. No other team in our 22-league, 33-season dataset has matched or exceeded it.

Celtic appear 10 times in the top 100 winning streaks across all leagues, with an average streak length of 15.8 games. No team comes close in terms of frequency, Porto (7 appearances), Barcelona (7), and Man City (6) are the nearest rivals. Celtic's dominance of Scottish football across three decades makes them the single most represented team in the long-streak record.

2. Celtic - 22 consecutive wins, 2016-17

Brendan Rodgers' first full season at Celtic produced 22 consecutive wins, the second-longest streak in the database and Celtic's own second-best. The 2016-17 side conceded just 25 league goals across an entire season, providing the defensive foundation for an unbeaten domestic campaign.

3. Bayern Munich and Ajax - 19 consecutive wins

Bayern Munich's 19-game streak in 2013-14 came during Pep Guardiola's first season, a run that remains the longest in Bundesliga history in our dataset. Ajax's 19-game streak from 1994-95 to 1995-96 crossed a season boundary, beginning in the famous Ajax Champions League-winning campaign under Louis van Gaal and continuing into the following season.

Liverpool and Man City: the Premier League's finest runs

Liverpool's 18-game winning streak in 2019-20 and Man City's 18-game run in 2017-18 are the two longest in Premier League history within our database. What makes Liverpool's record more remarkable is context: they also ran 17 consecutive wins across the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons, meaning the 17 and 18-game streaks are effectively back-to-back. Liverpool won 35 of 36 Premier League matches across a continuous period stretching from March 2019 to February 2020.

Man City appear 6 times in the top 100 winning streaks, 4th among all clubs in our database, with three separate streaks of 15+ games (18 in 2017-18, 15 in 2020-21, and 15 again in 2018-19). Pep Guardiola's City sides represent the most consistently streak-prone team in recent Premier League history.

Arsenal's 14-game streak in 2001-02, though outside the top 10, is worth noting, it came during the Invincibles-era build-up and contributes to Arsenal's appearance in the broader streak records.

The most frequent clubs in the top 100 winning streaks

The pattern is consistent with what you would expect: dominant clubs in leagues with a significant gap between the top team and the rest of the division produce the most long winning streaks. Celtic's 10 appearances reflect their sustained domestic dominance across three managers (O'Neill, Rodgers, and Ange Postecoglou) and two eras.

The Longest Losing Streaks

A note on methodology: The losing streak data requires more careful interpretation than the winning streak data. Because our streak calculation tracks consecutive results across all appearances of a team in a given division, entries showing streaks spanning many years almost certainly reflect data gaps, teams relegated from one division, absent from the database for periods, and then returning. These are excluded from the table above. The records shown here are for streaks contained within a single season or, at most, two consecutive seasons with no gap.

1. East Stirling - 24 consecutive losses, 2003-04

The credible record belongs to East Stirling in Scottish League 2 during 2003-04. Twenty-four consecutive losses in a single season is an extraordinary and, from a football perspective, almost incomprehensible run. For context, Celtic's 25-game winning streak occupies one end of the spectrum; East Stirling's 24-game losing run occupies the other. They occurred in the same country and the same season.

East Stirling appear 5 times in the top 100 losing streaks, with multiple long runs across different seasons, reflecting a period of sustained difficulty at the lower end of Scottish football.

Relegated and wound-up clubs

Several entries in the losing streak records represent clubs that effectively ceased to exist or were forcibly relegated mid-season. Reus Deportiu's 21-game losing run in La Liga 2 in 2018-19 ended with their expulsion from the league due to financial insolvency. Benevento's 14-game run in 2017-18 came in their first-ever Serie A season, where the gap in quality between them and every other club in the division was stark. These streaks represent an extreme version of the quality gap that produces losing runs, not a gradual decline but a near-impossible competitive situation.

The Premier League's longest: Norwich, 16 games

Norwich City's entry in the table requires a note. The 16-game run spanning 2019-22 crosses a relegation and return to the Premier League. They were relegated after 2019-20, promoted back after 2020-21, and returned to the Premier League for 2021-22. Our cross-season methodology connects their final Premier League loss in 2019-20 with their first loss on return in 2021-22, a gap of over a year. The streak reflects the pattern of their Premier League results but is not a genuinely consecutive run in the normal sense.

Removing this entry, the true Premier League record within a continuous period would be lower, likely around 11-12 matches.

League-by-League Records

*Premier League loss record inflated by the Norwich cross-season entry discussed above.

The Scottish Premiership holds the highest win record (25) but a moderate loss record (13), reflecting that Celtic's dominance concentrates long winning streaks without the league producing equivalently catastrophic losing runs. The Super Lig's 20-game loss record (Gaziantep, 2022-24) and 17-game win record reflect a league with significant quality gaps between different strata.

Are Long Streaks Becoming More Common?

Our era summary allows a direct test: are long streaks more or less common now than they were in the 1990s and 2000s?

Average streak length has barely changed across three decades, from 1.57 to 1.65 games on average. The increase in 10+ game streaks from the 1990s to the 2010s reflects primarily the expansion of leagues covered (more teams means more streaks) rather than a meaningful structural change. Adjusted for the number of teams and matches in each era, long streaks are no more common now than they were 30 years ago.

The Covid season produced no 10+ game losing streaks, the compressed, accelerated schedule appears to have prevented the kind of extended collapse that typically requires a full season to develop.

Context for Current Streaks

PSV Eindhoven held a 13-game winning streak from September 2025 to January 2026, their third streak of 13+ games in our database, reflecting sustained Eredivisie dominance. Galatasaray's 15-game streak from April 2025 is still within two seasons of their record 17-game run in 2023-24, making them the most consistently streaky team in the Super Lig over the past three seasons.

In England, Sheffield Wednesday's 13-game losing streak in the Championship (January–March 2026) and Wolves' 11-game run in the Premier League (October–December 2025) are the most prominent recent losing runs. Neither approaches the historical records, but both represent the kind of extended collapse that characterises a club in significant structural difficulty.

Summary

Celtic's 25-game winning streak in 2003-04 is the longest in our 22-league, 33-season database. Liverpool's back-to-back runs of 17 and 18 games across 2018-2020 represent the most sustained Premier League dominance in the dataset. Bayern Munich and Ajax both achieved 19-game runs that stand as the records for the Bundesliga and Eredivisie respectively.

The longest credible losing streak is East Stirling's 24-game run in 2003-04, a full-season collapse in Scottish League 2. Most other extreme losing streaks are concentrated among relegated clubs, financially distressed teams, or promoted sides making their first appearance in a division significantly above their ceiling.

Long streaks have not become more common over time. The average streak length across all 22 leagues is 1.57 to 1.65 games and has barely moved in three decades.

Data from the Dedicated Betting database: 22 leagues, 1993–2026. Winning streaks defined as consecutive wins across all appearances in a given division (cross-season included). Losing streak records filtered to exclude entries showing multi-year gaps consistent with relegation and return.

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