If your club spends the season anywhere near the bottom, you carry a number around from August. For most of us it’s 40. We say it in the pub in September, repeat it in March when the table starts to look scary, and cling to it in April like a lifejacket. Forty points and we’re safe.
It is a lovely idea, and it is mostly true. But the real answer is more interesting than that, and last season it got a lot more uncomfortable. If you want to test it for your own club, you can run the numbers in our Premier League table calculator and see exactly how many points a team needs from the games it has left. Although some might not prefer to know!
How many points are needed to avoid relegation in the Premier League?
40 points is the safe mark. Only three clubs in the 20-team Premier League era have been relegated with 40 or more points, and none of them has done it since 2002-03.
36 to 38 points has usually been enough. In the 14 seasons before 2025-26, no 18th-placed team finished above 37 points. Across all 38-game seasons, the average total for the first relegated club is 34.5, and the average needed to survive is around 36.
It can go much lower. Nottingham Forest stayed up on 32 points in 2023-24, and in 2024-25 a club would have survived on 26.
My own view is that 40 is the right number to put on a banner and the wrong number to plan a season around, and I will explain why below.
Is 40 points enough to stay up?
The rule exists because it works. Sunderland were relegated with 40 in 1996-97, Bolton with 40 in 1997-98 and West Ham with 42 in 2002-03. That 42 is still the highest total any club has gone down with in a 38-game season.
But the rule is also a comfort blanket. Look at how rarely clubs actually need 40, and you can see that it overstates the usual requirement. Most years, 36 or 38 is enough, and plenty of teams have stayed up on less.
I think football fans like 40 for the same reason we like round numbers in everything. It feels like a finish line. The trouble is that it gives clubs a false sense of when to relax, and it makes a club on 37 points look doomed when it may well be safe.
Has anyone been relegated with 40 points?
Yes, three clubs, and all of them in the 1990s and early 2000s. Sunderland went down on 40 in 1996-97, a point behind Coventry. Bolton went down on 40 the following season, level on points with Everton and relegated on goal difference. West Ham then went down with 42 in 2002-03.
Nobody has been relegated with 40 or more since, which is a run of more than 20 years. Last season came closer than any in that time: Tottenham survived on 41, so 39 wasn’t enough for West Ham, and 40 only would have been if goal difference went your way.
What I find interesting is that all three happened in a seven-year window. The league was much more even back then, and the gap between the bottom half and the middle hadn’t opened up yet.
Who got relegated with 42 points?
West Ham, in 2002-03. They finished 18th on 42 points, two behind Bolton, and it’s still the highest total ever relegated from a 38-game Premier League season.
What makes it remarkable is the squad. Joe Cole, Jermain Defoe, Michael Carrick, Glen Johnson, Paolo Di Canio, Frederic Kanoute and David James all played for them that season. Glenn Roeder fell ill in April, Trevor Brooking took over and they didn’t lose a game under him, finishing with a 2-2 draw at Birmingham on the final day. It still wasn’t enough.
For me, it’s the most talented side ever to go down from the Premier League, and I don’t think it’s close. That West Ham went down twice with the two highest totals in this article, 42 and then 39 last season, feels like the cruellest stat on this page.
Premier League relegation points history
Here is the total of the first relegated club, the team that finished 18th, over the last ten seasons:
| Season | 18th place | Points |
|---|---|---|
| 2016-17 | Hull City | 34 |
| 2017-18 | Swansea City | 33 |
| 2018-19 | Cardiff City | 34 |
| 2019-20 | Bournemouth | 34 |
| 2020-21 | Fulham | 28 |
| 2021-22 | Burnley | 35 |
| 2022-23 | Leicester City | 34 |
| 2023-24 | Luton Town | 26 |
| 2024-25 | Leicester City | 25 |
| 2025-26 | West Ham United | 39 |
A club needs one more point than the 18th-placed team, or the same points and a better goal difference. On that measure, 35 would have kept most of these clubs up, and 27 would have been enough in both 2023-24 and 2024-25.
Then look at the bottom row. West Ham finished on 39 points in 2025-26 and went down, with Burnley on 22 and Wolves on 20. Tottenham survived in 17th on 41, which means the line last season was effectively 40, the old magic number. In the 14 seasons before that, 38 points had always been enough.
The last time 39 points wasn’t enough was 2010-11, when Birmingham and Blackpool both went down on 39 and Wolves stayed up on 40. It took fifteen years for the number to climb that high again.
What West Ham’s 39 Should Teach Us
I felt for West Ham fans last season, and not only because I’ve been through the maths on a few nervy Aprils myself. They beat Leeds 3-0 on the final day, did everything they could, and still went down after 14 years in the top flight because Tottenham beat Everton 1-0.
The lesson is that survival isn’t about the total you reach. It’s about the total the clubs around you reach. West Ham weren’t dragged down by a strong bottom three. They were dragged down by a club with Tottenham’s budget having a season bad enough to end up in the scrap, and nobody’s 40-point plan accounts for that. In late February, West Ham were 18th and only two points from safety with 11 games left, which tells you how fine the margins were all along.
Palace finished the season on 45, six points clear of West Ham, and even that felt closer than I would have liked. The Athletic’s writers have already tipped us as a club to worry about this year, and I hate that I understand why. My honest advice to any fan is to ignore the comfortable 40 and pay attention to the three clubs below you.
What 6 teams have never been relegated?
Six clubs have played in every Premier League season since 1992: Arsenal, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool, Manchester United and Tottenham.
Everton have had the closest calls historically. They needed to come from 2-0 down to beat Wimbledon 3-2 on the final day in 1994, and they stayed up on goal difference above Bolton in 1998.
But right now the club whose record is under most threat is Tottenham. They finished 17th in both of the last two seasons, survived on the final day last May after spending a night in the bottom three in April for the first time since 2015, and after six games of this season they’re back in the bottom three. If I had to bet on one of the six losing their status in the next few years, it would be Spurs, and two years ago I’d have laughed at anyone who said that.
Why the Number Keeps Changing
The survival total depends less on how good the best teams are and more on how bad the worst teams are. When the bottom three collapse, the line drops. In 2024-25 Leicester went down on 25 points, so 26 would have kept a club up. When several clubs in the lower half are competitive, as in 2025-26, the line rises.
It is also worth remembering the extremes. Derby County finished 2007-08 with 11 points, the lowest in Premier League history, while West Brom survived in 2004-05 on 34 after a famous final-day escape. Forest’s 32 in 2023-24 is the lowest total to stay up, but it came after a four-point deduction for breaching financial rules, so on the pitch they had 36.
I find those deductions unhelpful for anyone trying to work out a survival line. They muddy the numbers, and a total like Forest’s 32 tells you more about the rulebook than it does about how many points a club needs to stay up.
What’s the lowest Premier League points ever?
Derby County hold the record with 11 points in 2007-08, from one win and eight draws. Southampton came within a point of matching it in 2024-25, finishing on 12, and Sunderland’s 15 in 2005-06 is third.
At the other end of survival, Nottingham Forest’s 32 in 2023-24 is the lowest total to stay up, although that came after a four-point deduction, so on the pitch they had 36. Before that, West Brom survived on 34 in 2004-05 after a famous final-day escape.
I find those deductions unhelpful for anyone trying to work out a survival line. They muddy the numbers, and a total like Forest’s 32 tells you more about the rulebook than it does about how many points a club needs to stay up.
How Goal Difference and Tiebreakers Affect Survival
Points are not the only thing that matters at the bottom. If two clubs finish level, goal difference decides who stays up, and that can be the difference between another year of Premier League money and a season in the Championship. We explain how the number works in our guide to how goal difference is calculated in the Premier League.
It is a factor all season, not just on the final day. In March 2026, West Ham sat in the bottom three purely on goal difference. If that is also level, the league looks at goals scored and then head-to-head results, and you can read the full order in our guide to Premier League tiebreakers.
My rule of thumb is simple. If your goal difference is bad, add two points to your target.
How to Work Out How Many Points You Need
You can estimate a safe target for any club in four steps:
- Pick a target. Use 38 points for a reasonable safety mark, or 40 if you want to be sure.
- Subtract the points you have. If a club has 24 points, it needs 14 more to reach 38.
- Count the games left. If there are 14 matches to play, that is one point per game.
- Compare it with the form. A club picking up 0.6 points a game is in trouble, and one averaging 1.3 is on course.
A simple benchmark helps. To reach 38 points over a season, a team needs one point a game, which is a draw in every match. To reach 40, it needs a little over 1.05 a game, roughly 13 wins and a draw from 38. That sounds easy until you watch a struggling side try to do it.
If I were running a club, I would set 42 as the target. It sounds greedy, but it builds in a cushion against a year like 2025-26.
How many points to be safe in Premier League 2026
For the 2025-26 season, the honest answer turned out to be 40. Tottenham survived on 41 and West Ham went down on 39, so you needed 40 points, or 39 and a better goal difference than West Ham’s, to be safe.
For 2026-27, it’s early, but the first six games have already thrown up some clues. Fulham have just two points, and Tottenham and Bournemouth are on three. Fulham’s current pace would leave them on around 13 points over a full season, which won’t last, but it tells you how badly some clubs have started.
The promoted sides look stronger than the last two years’ versions too. Coventry beat Newcastle 4-1 and Ipswich beat Fulham, and when the promoted clubs pick up points, the line tends to rise. My prediction is that 38 will be the number this season, not the 36 the long-term average suggests.
Staying Up vs Winning the League
It is worth putting the numbers in perspective. Surviving takes about 38 points, while winning the title usually takes more than twice as many. We break down the figures in our guide to how many points it takes to win the Premier League.
Somewhere in the middle sit the European places, which depend on different rules and a different kind of fight. We explain how those work in how Premier League European places are decided.
My Verdict: Forget the Magic Number
I have spent enough Aprils watching a table with a pen in my hand to know that 40 feels safe right up until it is not. West Ham’s 39 is the proof. For years the sensible answer was 36 or 38, and then a club with 39 went down.
So here is my advice. Treat 40 as the number that guarantees safety, 38 as the number that probably does, and anything below 36 as a position where you need the clubs underneath you to be worse than you are. And never, ever relax at 37.
What is the lowest number of points to stay up?
Nottingham Forest stayed up on 32 points in 2023-24 after a four-point deduction. Before that, West Brom had survived on 34 in 2004-05.
What happens if teams finish level on points?
They are separated by goal difference, then goals scored, then head-to-head results. You can read the full rules in our guide to Premier League tiebreakers.
