Aston Villa are Europa League champions. The Birmingham club defeated SC Freiburg in the 2025/26 final in Istanbul, ending a trophy drought that stretched back more than three decades and writing themselves into European football history for the second time.
The last piece of major silverware Villa lifted was the League Cup in 1994. Their only previous European trophy came in 1982, when they were crowned champions of the continent itself. This victory in Turkey adds a second line to that distinguished but long-dormant record — and it arrives under a manager who has now established himself as one of the most accomplished European operators in the game.
Goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez was central to the victory, producing a performance described across the industry as heroic despite carrying a broken finger into the final. That he played at all under those circumstances will inevitably sharpen the debate around his future at the club, with suggestions that Villa may now reconsider any plans to move him on this summer. A goalkeeper who performs at that level in a European final, injured, is not straightforwardly replaceable.
For Freiburg, the defeat lands hard. Head coach Julian Schuster acknowledged after the final whistle that it would take time to process the loss — a measured response from a manager whose side had no business being written off at any point in the competition. The German club, a model of modest ambition made real, reached the final of a major UEFA competition and will return to the Bundesliga with their reputation considerably enhanced, even in defeat.
On loan from Liverpool, Harvey Elliott featured in Villa's squad and has spoken publicly about the occasion — a detail that hints at the breadth of feeling the result has generated beyond Villa Park. What the victory means in purely sporting terms is already clear: Aston Villa will compete in the UEFA Champions League next season. Whether the squad that achieved this can be retained and reinforced to meet that challenge is the question that now presses most urgently on the club's hierarchy. For one night in Istanbul, though, none of that mattered.