The biggest question heading into the 2024/25 Ligue 1 season was a simple one: could PSG still dominate without Kylian Mbappe? The answer, delivered across 34 matchdays, was an emphatic yes. Paris Saint-Germain won their 13th league title with 84 points, a 30-match unbeaten run and 92 goals scored. They clinched the title with six games remaining after a 1-0 win over Angers on 5 April 2025. Mbappe, who signed for Real Madrid in the summer of 2024 after seven years at PSG, was replaced not by one player but by a collective unit built around Ousmane Dembele, Bradley Barcola and a midfield that finally got the balance right under Luis Enrique. Outside Paris, Marseille finished second for the first time in years, Mason Greenwood proved the sceptics wrong with 21 league goals, and Monaco kept pace for long enough to make this a three-team race until February.
Last season: Mbappe's farewell and PSG's 12th title
In 2023/24, PSG won their 12th Ligue 1 title with Mbappe in his final season. He scored 27 league goals, won the Golden Boot for the fifth consecutive time, and left for Real Madrid having scored 256 goals for the club across seven seasons. PSG lost just one of their 31 Ligue 1 matches that campaign. The expectation heading into 2024/25 was that the transition from a Mbappe-centred team to a genuinely collective side would be messy. It was not.
PSG: the post-Mbappe blueprint
Luis Enrique built PSG's 2024/25 season around a pressing system with multiple attacking outlets. Dembele, operating centrally from what is technically a false nine or roaming forward role, finished the season with 21 goals and led the attacking line. Bradley Barcola, operating from the left flank at pace, contributed 14 goals and established himself as one of the best young wide forwards in European football. Fabian Ruiz and Vitinha controlled the midfield. The defensive shape was organised enough to concede only 35 goals, the best record in the division. PSG's 30-match unbeaten run across the season was the longest in Ligue 1 history for a single campaign. They also recorded ten consecutive wins at one point. The word used repeatedly in French football coverage was fluide. PSG's football in 2024/25 had a rhythm and a coherence that was absent in the chaotic final years of the Mbappe era, where everything bent around one individual.
Ousmane Dembele and Mason Greenwood: two Golden Boots, one award
The Ligue 1 top scorer award was shared, officially, between Ousmane Dembele of PSG and Mason Greenwood of Marseille, both finishing with 21 goals. It was the first time in recent Ligue 1 history that two players tied for the top scoring position. Dembele's 21 goals came across PSG's dominant campaign; Greenwood's came in a Marseille side that lacked PSG's squad depth. Greenwood, on a season-long loan from Manchester United and then permanently signed, produced the most productive season of his career. His link-up with Marseille's supporting cast, his hold-up play, and his reliability in front of goal made him one of the players of the campaign regardless of the off-field discussions that always surround his name. Jonathan David of Lille scored 16, Arnaud Kalimuendo of Rennes scored 17, suggesting French football's scoring talent was more evenly distributed in 2024/25 than in previous Mbappe-dominated seasons.
Marseille: genuine competition from the south
Marseille finished second on 65 points, 19 behind PSG. It sounds comfortable but Marseille's level this season was meaningfully higher than in recent years. They recorded a 5-1 win over Montpellier with 66,312 fans in attendance, the season's highest crowd, which gives some sense of the energy around the club. Greenwood's goals, the solidity in midfield, and a home record that made the Velodrome a fortress again were the foundations. Whether Marseille can close the gap to PSG in 2025/26 depends largely on whether Greenwood stays at the level he showed and whether the squad is strengthened at the back, where 46 goals conceded was too many for a side with real title ambitions.
Monaco: third and looking forward
Monaco finished third on 61 points, qualifying for the Champions League. Their 7-1 win over Nantes was the season's most one-sided performance outside of Nice's 8-0 destruction of Saint-Etienne on 20 September 2024. Monaco's squad, built around pace and technical quality through the middle, remains one of the most attractive setups in France. The club qualified for European football and gave their young squad another season of Ligue 1 experience. The gap from Monaco to PSG remains significant, but there is a realistic path to second place in 2025/26 if Marseille's second-place finish does not represent a step-change in consistency.
Relegation: Saint-Etienne go down again
Saint-Etienne, Montpellier and Reims all dropped out of Ligue 1 in 2024/25. Saint-Etienne's season featured a 8-0 home loss to Nice in September, which was the lowest point. The club, one of the most historic in French football with ten league titles, have now spent more of the last decade outside Ligue 1 than in it. Montpellier's relegation ended a long Ligue 1 presence. Reims went down via the promotion-relegation playoff.
Ligue 1 2024/25 trivia
- PSG's 30-match unbeaten run during the 2024/25 season is the longest in a single Ligue 1 campaign in the league's history.
- Ousmane Dembele and Mason Greenwood both finished with 21 goals, the first shared Golden Boot in Ligue 1 since the 1990s.
- Nice's 8-0 win over Saint-Etienne on 20 September 2024 was the biggest margin of victory in Ligue 1 that season and one of the largest in the modern era.
- PSG scored 92 goals across 34 matches, an average of 2.7 per game, without Mbappe in the squad.
- Bradley Barcola became the first player born in 2002 or later to score 14 or more goals in a single Ligue 1 season.
- Monaco's 7-1 win over Nantes came in December and helped them move into third place where they stayed for the rest of the season.
What actually happened in 2025/26
PSG won a 14th Ligue 1 title, their fifth consecutive, clinching it on 13 May 2026 with a 2-0 win over Lens. They also won the Champions League that season, beating Arsenal in the final. Esteban Lepaul of Rennes won the Golden Boot with 21 goals. Lens, Lille and Lyon joined PSG in qualifying for the Champions League. Nantes and Metz were relegated. See the full story in the 2025/26 Ligue 1 Season Review.
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