Leicester City Relegated to League One After 2-2 Draw With Hull

Leicester City’s 2-2 draw with Hull City on Tuesday confirmed the club’s relegation from the Championship to League One, completing a steep decline 10 years after its improbable Premier League title. The result means Leicester will play in England’s third tier in the 2026-27 season.

At King Power Stadium, Hull went ahead through Liam Millar in the 18th minute before Leicester responded after halftime with Jordan James’ penalty in the 52nd and a goal from Luke Thomas two minutes later. Oliver McBurnie equalized for Hull in the 63rd minute. The draw left Leicester on 42 points from 44 matches, with two games remaining and no mathematical route to safety.

The drop completes back-to-back relegations for Leicester after the club fell out of the Premier League last season. It will be only the second third-tier campaign in Leicester’s history. The previous one came in 2008-09, when the club won the division and earned an immediate return to the second tier.

Leicester’s fight to stay up was further complicated by a six-point deduction imposed earlier this season for breaching Profit & Sustainability rules, the English game’s spending regulations. An independent commission recommended the sanction on Feb. 5 after finding Leicester had exceeded the applicable loss threshold by 20.8 million pounds over the 2022-24 assessment period. Leicester said at the time, “It is with disappointment that Leicester City acknowledges the Independent Commission’s decision and the Club will use the time available to consider its next steps.” The club appealed, but that challenge was dismissed in early April, leaving the deduction in place for the final stretch of the season.

Without that penalty, Leicester’s points total would have been higher, but the draw against Hull still served as the formal confirmation of relegation with two matches left. The outcome capped a season in which the club could not reverse its slide after dropping out of the top flight.

The scale of the fall is what makes Tuesday’s result so striking. Leicester were crowned Premier League champions in the 2015-16 season, one of the most unlikely title wins in modern English soccer. That triumph was sealed on May 2, 2016, when Tottenham Hotspur drew 2-2 with Chelsea, confirming Leicester as champions.

A decade later, Leicester has gone from the top of English soccer to League One. For a club that lifted the Premier League trophy only 10 years ago, relegation to the third tier stands as a rare and notable reversal in such a short span.