Putting the year in context

Because of how long and how expensively it had been chased. Since new ownership arrived in 2011, PSG had signed stars such as Neymar, Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappé, won French titles regularly and still fallen short in Europe, most painfully in the 2020 final against Bayern Munich. The 2024–25 triumph in Munich, against Inter, came with a younger, more collective team under Luis Enrique, after Mbappé had left. It was the first European Cup in the club's history. Read the football year.

Previous editions were short tournaments with a handful of clubs, usually squeezed into the middle of the European season. The 2025 version expanded to 32 clubs from six confederations, ran for about a month across the United States and used a World Cup-style format of groups followed by knockout rounds. Chelsea won it, beating Paris Saint-Germain in the final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. Whether the format becomes a fixture is a question for FIFA's future calendar. More on Chelsea's year.

England won Women's Euro 2025 in Switzerland, beating Spain on penalties in the final in Basel. The win had extra weight because Spain had beaten them in the 2023 World Cup final, and because defending a title is harder than winning one. Several knockout games were rescued late, and Chloe Kelly, who scored the winner in 2022, converted the decisive penalty. Sarina Wiegman completed a third consecutive Euro win as a coach, one with the Netherlands and two with England.

Yes. Jannik Sinner won the Australian Open and Wimbledon, while Carlos Alcaraz won Roland Garros and the US Open. They also met in three consecutive major finals, in Paris, London and New York. That sharing of the biggest titles is why many followers described 2025 as the year a new rivalry clearly took over from the long era of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. See the tennis majors.

Winning all four of golf's modern majors, the Masters, the PGA Championship, the US Open and The Open, is known as the career Grand Slam. McIlroy had won the other three by 2014 and then spent more than a decade trying to win at Augusta. His play-off win over Justin Rose in April 2025 made him only the sixth player to complete the set, joining Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. More breakthroughs.

The Philadelphia Eagles beat the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans. Kansas City had won the two previous Super Bowls and were trying to become the first team to win three in a row, so the Eagles' win stopped a piece of history. Jalen Hurts was named the game's most valuable player. It was Philadelphia's second Super Bowl title and reversed the result of the teams' earlier Super Bowl meeting. Read the US championships.

It was the first championship since the franchise moved from Seattle, where it had won as the SuperSonics in 1979, to Oklahoma City in 2008. Earlier Thunder teams came close but never won. The 2025 side, led by Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, beat the Indiana Pacers in a seven-game Finals and was built largely through draft picks and trades, which made it a notable example of a smaller-market team rising to the top.

Several. Newcastle United won the League Cup, their first major domestic trophy since 1955. Crystal Palace won the FA Cup, the first major trophy in their history. Tottenham Hotspur won the Europa League, their first trophy since 2008. In cricket, South Africa won the World Test Championship at Lord's, their first major ICC title since 1998. Each of these mattered more to supporters than the size of the trophy alone might suggest. See the turning points.

The aim is to explain meaning rather than to archive numbers. Results are named, and venues and opponents where they help, but scorelines, tables and records are best checked with the bodies that keep them officially, such as UEFA, FIFA, the Premier League, the ATP, the WTA, the ICC and the major US leagues. Those organisations update and correct their records; a retrospective written for general readers cannot replace them.