UEFA Champions League Team of the Season 2025/26: Full XI with Kvaratskhelia, Dembélé, Vitinha

Paris Saint-Germain won back-to-back Champions League titles on May 30, 2026, beating Arsenal 4-3 on penalties after a 1-1 draw in Budapest. Two days later, UEFA’s Technical Observer Group published the official Team of the Season, and PSG dominated that too, with five of the eleven spots.

Three Arsenal players also made the cut, recognising a Gunners side that reached their first-ever Champions League final. Bayern München got two representatives, and Atlético de Madrid one. No Barcelona. No Real Madrid.

Here’s the full XI, position by position.

Goalkeeper: David Raya (Arsenal)

Arsenal conceded just once in open play across the knockout rounds, and Raya was a big reason why. His shot-stopping has never been in question, but what stood out this season was how calm he made everything behind him look. Mikel Arteta’s system demands a lot from the keeper, high line, compressed shape, constant exposure to counter-attacks, and Raya handled it without a flicker.

He wasn’t perfect. The penalty shootout against PSG in the final is something Gunners fans will replay for years. But across the sixteen weeks of knockout football that got Arsenal to Budapest, he was one of the best goalkeepers in the competition.

Defenders: Llorente, Marquinhos, Gabriel, Nuno Mendes

Marcos Llorente (Atlético de Madrid) earns his place as the sole representative from Diego Simeone’s side. Atletico were the tournament’s most awkward team to break down, and Llorente, operating as a right-sided defender in their rigid low block, contributed at both ends more than his positional role suggests.

Marquinhos (PSG) is 31 and still doing it. He’s been the captain, leader, and backbone of PSG’s two-year European run. His reading of the game covers for the high press that Luis Enrique demands, and he distributes cleanly out of the back in a way that sets PSG’s attacks in motion before most opponents have even noticed.

Gabriel Magalhães (Arsenal) had his best season in Europe. Commanding in the air, aggressive off the line, and, crucially, composed under the pressing traps that Arteta set up in the knockout games. He and Marquinhos are probably the two best centre-backs in this competition right now. You could flip a coin.

Nuno Mendes (PSG) on the left completes a back four that mixes attacking intent with surprising defensive solidity. The Portuguese left-back is one of the fastest players in world football, and PSG use that ruthlessly. He pins wingers back, overlaps with Kvaratskhelia in tight spaces, and can recover even when caught out of position.

Midfielders: Olise, Rice, Vitinha, Kvaratskhelia

Michael Olise (Bayern München) was the surprise of the tournament’s individual awards. The French winger-turned-midfielder created 33 chances, second in the entire competition, and his expected assists figure of 4.9 was the highest of anyone. Six assists and five goals in a Bayern side that reached the semi-finals before bowing out to PSG, and at 23, he looks like the next great product of the French academy system.

Declan Rice (Arsenal) was asked to do everything. Win the ball back, receive under pressure, drive forward in transitions, track runners in the final third, organise the press triggers. He did most of it most of the time. His range of passing opened up spaces against deeper-sitting teams, and in the semi-finals against Real Madrid, he was comfortably the best player on the pitch across both legs. The final was hard to watch for him, Arsenal had enough to win it, but Rice’s season deserves to be remembered separately from that result.

Vitinha (PSG) was named Player of the Match in the final itself, despite finishing with no goals or assists. The Technical Observer Group explained it plainly: he took charge of midfield in the second half, drove PSG forward and set the tempo. That description fits his entire season. He has started all 17 of PSG’s knockout matches across these past two Champions League campaigns, and his ball retention is the heartbeat of Luis Enrique’s system; almost everything funnels through him. He didn’t dip below 93% pass completion across the Champions League, Ligue 1, or Club World Cup this season. The hat-trick he scored against Tottenham in the league phase hinted at a more complete player than the numbers usually show. He’s also a two-time Champions League winner at 26.

Khvicha Kvaratskhelia (PSG) won Player of the Season and isn’t really a debate. The Georgian winger scored ten goals and provided six assists in 16 appearances, with 16 total goal involvements tying him with Harry Kane and Kylian Mbappé for the most in the competition. He is the first player ever to score or assist in seven consecutive knockout appearances in a single Champions League campaign.

His best moment came in the 5-4 semi-final first leg against Bayern, where he curled one in to level things at 1-1 before adding a second. But the numbers sell short what watching him actually feels like. He drifts inside from the left, slows defenders down by doing almost nothing, then accelerates past them so quickly it barely looks fair. Under Luis Enrique, he has also become one of only two wingers to register 800+ high-intensity pressures in the Champions League since last season’s knockout rounds. He defended like a midfielder all season. The Player of the Season award was unanimous.

Forwards: Dembélé, Kane

Ousmane Dembélé (PSG) put together the best sustained run of his career in this competition. He won Best Player of last season’s Champions League, and this time, while Kvaratskhelia took that individual honour, Dembélé was still the forward making life miserable for opposition right-backs every three weeks. In the final against Arsenal, he stepped up and converted the penalty that pulled PSG level at 1-1 after Kvaratskhelia was brought down in the box. That penalty, in the 89th minute in a Champions League final, is the kind of moment that separates players. Dembélé didn’t blink.

Harry Kane (Bayern München) scored prolifically throughout. Kylian Mbappé finished as the competition’s top scorer with 15 goals for Real Madrid, but Kane matched him for goal involvements alongside Kvaratskhelia, finishing the competition with an extraordinary return despite Bayern’s exit at the semi-final stage. His hold-up play, movement and link-up with Olise made Bayern one of the two or three most entertaining teams in the tournament. The semi-final against PSG, a 5-4 first leg, a 1-1 second leg, will be remembered for a long time.

The Full XI

PSG’s Historic Double

PSG successfully defended their Champions League title, beating Arsenal 4-3 on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the final on May 30, 2026. Their five players in the Team of the Season, Marquinhos, Nuno Mendes, Vitinha, Kvaratskhelia, Dembélé, ran the full length of the pitch, from a 31-year-old captain to a 25-year-old Georgian winger who has become one of the best players in the world faster than most people expected.

Luis Enrique has now won two Champions Leagues at PSG after joining a club that was known for spending lavishly and winning little in Europe. The squad he has now isn’t the one loaded with individual stars from a few years back. It’s more collective than that, pressed harder, moved together, trusted each other in the penalty shootout when it was 1-1 and the whole season came down to five kicks.

Arsenal, for their part, shouldn’t let this final define how they look back on 2025/26. Three players in the UEFA Team of the Season, a first-ever final, and performances in the knockout rounds, particularly against Real Madrid, that suggested a team ready to win this competition eventually.

The Bayern semi-final, the Arsenal final, the Kvaratskhelia moments, the Vitinha performance when the occasion was largest, this was a good Champions League season. The Team of the Season reflects that honestly.