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Real Madrid is one of the largest football and sports clubs in the world and, in terms of financial figures in recent years, the largest football club in the world. Now the royals have published and approved their first figures for the 2025/26 season. In this article, we look at the numbers and analyze the latest sales, profit, equity, and debt. We also look at the role that the Santiago Bernabeu, including renovation, plays in Real’s finances. For the previous season, we had already analyzed Real Madrid’s figures in this article.
Revenue Growth Reaches Historic Levels
For the 2025/26 season, Real Madrid achieved total sales of 1.221 billion euros. This makes Real Madrid the first sports club to achieve sales of over 1.2 billion euros in a financial year. This makes Real Madrid the highest-grossing sports club in the world. Overall, this is an increase of 36 million euros compared to the previous year, which corresponds to a percentage increase of 3.1%. In percentage terms, this is a weak increase for Real Madrid over the last 25 years. Over the last 25 seasons, sales have increased by an average of 9.6%. This is partly due to the fact that Real Madrid is already operating at such a high level in total development that it is difficult to maintain this strong percentage increase, but also because there were a few peculiarities compared to last season. For example, the 2024/25 Club World Cup was played, which resulted in enormous additional revenue. In addition, no marketing tour could be carried out that would allow additional revenue to be firmly planned for the pre-season. This falls in the new financial year, due to the 2026 World Cup. Thus, after a loss of 20%, revenues from competitions and friendly matches will increase significantly in the new financial year. In addition, merchandising revenues also fell by 20% due to a lack of sporting success.
This compares to increasing revenues from stadium revenue, TV money, marketing and sponsorship revenue. Stadium revenue was increased by 11% due to the newly introduced Personal Seat Licenses. These PSL’s were originally invented in the USA and are used to pre-finance a new building or renovation of a stadium. Real Madrid sold a total of 475 PSLs, resulting in additional revenue of 70 million euros (how much of this will be for the 2025/26 season is unknown). These PSLs are seats that are sold once for 30 years. The buyer retains the right to resell the seats. Excluding PSL revenue, Real Madrid was still able to increase stadium revenue by 8% compared to the previous season. Revenue from TV money from La Liga and Copa del Rey also increased by 3%. Marketing revenue increased by 6%. Sponsorship revenue even increased by 17%, due to the renewal of old sponsorship contracts on better terms as well as additional new sponsors.
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Record Operating Profit and Unmatched Financial Stability
But Real Madrid has not only set records on the revenue side in the 2025/26 season. With an operating profit of 287 million euros in 2025/26, Real Madrid achieved a record profit this season. This is an increase of EUR 44.5 million, which means 18%. In general, Real Madrid has been extremely profitable in terms of operations for decades. The last season in which no operating profit was recorded was the 2002/03 season, in which the Royals suffered a loss of 19 million euros. After that, Real Madrid consistently made an operating profit, even during the Corona pandemic, in which many football clubs experienced difficult times. In addition, Real managed to steadily increase operating profits (with small setbacks), so that a new record profit was achieved almost every new season. This ensures the financial dominance that Real Madrid has built over the last 20-25 years. This dominance is also evident in the squad cost limits set by La Liga, where Real Madrid is at the top and which we have analyzed in the following article.
The development of equity and net debt is also interesting to see. Equity has increased more than twentyfold since 2000. Equity capital increased steadily every season. At the end of the 1999/2000 season, Real’s equity was EUR 30 million. At the end of the 2025/26 season, however, equity was 624 million euros. If you compare the net debt over the same period, you see again the financial strength of the club. This had EUR 162 million in 2000, resulting in an equity/net debt rate of 5.4. This is an alarming figure and shows that the club had serious financial problems in the early 2000s. These could be rotated fairly quickly due to the good financial results in operating profit. For example, just two years later, Real Madrid reached a negative level of -1.4, which means that equity is higher than net debt and thus indicates net liquidity. This is particularly evident in the value of net debt, which was -94 million euros in the same year and thus also expresses net liquidity. As of June 30, 2026, Real Madrid’s net debt is 12 million euros, partly because the Royal Debt excludes from the renovation of the Santiago Bernabeu. Combined with the high equity, this results in an equity/net debt rate close to 0. The development of net debt since 2009 is also interesting to see. In 2009, Real had the highest debt in the last 25 years at 327 million euros. Thereafter, net debt was successively reduced to -58 million euros into net liquidity in 2019. In 2020, net debt rose sharply to 241 million euros, which can be attributed to the Corona pandemic. However, as just described, these were almost completely dismantled within a few years.
If you want to understand the deeper philosophy behind Real Madrid’s long‑term financial dominance, The Real Madrid Way by Steven G. Mandis is essential reading. The book reveals how culture, values and strategic alignment transformed the club from near bankruptcy into the world’s most successful sports organization. It perfectly complements the financial analysis above by showing the human and organizational principles that drive Real Madrid’s record‑breaking results.
Bernabéu Renovation: Massive Investment and Strategic Debt Management
So far, this article has often written about numbers that exclude the Santiago Bernabeu. This has a simple background and can be explained by the high investment and financial burden. Real Madrid does not want this to be shown so clearly in its reports, as the remaining figures continue to show healthy growth. However, these financial burdens should by no means be ignored, although, as described at the beginning of the article, they already have high positive financial effects for Real Madrid. In the 2023/24 season, the main work on the stadium renovation was completed, resulting in a total investment of 1.163 billion euros. As of June 30, 2026, Real Madrid’s total investment in the renovation of the Santiago Bernabeu is 1.408 billion euros. FC Barcelona’s stadium renovation is also putting an extreme strain on them, which we have already analyzed in the following article. To support these investments, Real Madrid has raised 1.17 billion euros in debt/loans. These loans were reduced to 1.108 billion euros through repayments (in the 2023/24 season with 15 million euros and in the two following seasons with 46 million euros). At FC Barcelona, financing the stadium renovation looks significantly more difficult than at Real Madrid. This is due to the financial reserves that Real Madrid has saved on the other side. These consist of equity of EUR 624 million and unused credit lines of EUR 475 million. This provides liquid assets of EUR 1.099 billion, almost the same amount as the debt from the stadium renovation. In conclusion, Real Madrid is the strongest football club (if not sports club) in terms of financial operations and is probably the only member-led club that can afford such an expensive investment in infrastructure.
