The first contingent for the UEFA Champions League (UCL) final in Budapest has been decided. Mikel Arteta and his Arsenal squad will touch down in the Hungarian capital later this month for the Champions League final, the first time the club has gone this far in European football’s grandest competition since 2006. After two decades of being on the sidelines, of near-misses, of summers spent rebuilding and winters of already dashed hopes, all of that is almost now behind them, swept away by Bukayo Saka’s decisive goal that finished Atletico Madrid at the Emirates on Tuesday night and completed one of the most remarkable European campaigns a North London club has ever put together.

Arsenal went through the league phase of this remodelled Champions League format unbeaten, a record no other side managed. As far as being convincing goes, they were not always, but they did not disappoint where it mattered. The Gunners dispatched Bayern Munich at home, beat Inter Milan in Italy, and carried that form through a knockout bracket that eventually placed Diego Simeone’s famously stubborn Atletico side in their way. Simeone’s men held them to a 1-1 draw at the Metropolitano in the first leg, before they clinched a historic 1-0 victory to complete it at the Emirates last night.

CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FINALISTS ❤️ pic.twitter.com/uDfQQqQCWZ

— Arsenal (@Arsenal) May 5, 2026

“You have to be sometimes lucky, things have to go your way,” Arteta said of the victory. “We put obviously so much work, passion and belief into what w,e do and today we got rewarded to have an incredible day in Budapest in a few weeks.” 

Whoever emerges from the second semi-final clash between PSG and Bayern Munich later on Wednesday will face a side that has conceded sparingly, created consistently, and shown the sort of mental hardness that UCL nights demand. The Gunners have earned it, match by match, in the way the competition’s format now requires, to be one of the last two teams standing. Winning it would be historic by any measure. And right now, they look capable of doing exactly that.

Their recent league form might beg to differ. Losing to Bournemouth at home and to their title challenger, Manchester City, is the sort of run that asks recurring questions about their tenacity when it matters most. But football is anything if not unpredictable. Though they are not out of the woods yet, they currently have a four-point lead over City, who still have a game in hand, and they are looking more like the team that has been on the league’s summit for most of the campaign. Three league finals for Arsenal left to go: West Ham, Burnley, and Crystal Palace on the final day. Victories in all, and the title is theirs regardless of the results from the blue side of Manchester.

It is Arteta’s league to lose. And while he cannot afford to let it slip again, it is hard to argue with the fans who believe he has changed Arsenal’s life.  When the Spaniard arrived in December 2019, the club was in a kind of sustained confusion, talented in parts but directionless as a whole. The seasons that followed, especially the last three, have seen progress, but none spectacular enough to justify the investment and the patience from the fans. At the end of last season, when they finished as the Premier League runners-up for the third consecutive time, bec,oming in essence, the embodiment of bottlers, the question over the project was whether it needed a proven winner at the helm. 

However, between last summer and now, there has been significant growth, and this campaign so far is the result, though there are still a couple of clear tests to come.

If Arteta and his boys hold their nerve and lift the EPL as they should absolutely do, then a week later, the UCL trophy in Budapest, they will have done something the club has never done. Not in the Bergkamp years, not in the Henry years, not in the Invincibles season, which remains the most remarkable domestic achievement in English football’s recent history. 

A league and European double would not erase the years of heartbreaks, but it would mark, definitively, that the chapter has turned: the Arteta’s Arsenal project is not a process anymore, but a foundation that can only be consolidated. It will effectively end the doubt that has shadowed this Arsenal era. Victories in their remaining finals would not silence every critic, because critics are never truly silenced. But they would provide the only evidence that actually counts in football: trophies.