Atletico Madrid 2021 to Today: Title Eleven and the Years Since

The current era opens with a championship and continues without one. That is not a criticism of it, since the club has spent most of its history in exactly that condition, but it does make the 2020–21 season the fixed point everything since is measured against.

22 May 2021

Atletico won La Liga in 2020–21, sealed with a 2–1 win at Valladolid on 22 May 2021, on the final afternoon of the season.

It was the club’s eleventh title and the second under Diego Simeone, arriving seven years after the first. Both were decided on the last day and both were won away from home, 2014 at the Camp Nou and 2021 at Valladolid, which is a coincidence rather than a pattern, but a neat one.

The league record puts eleven titles third in the all-time Spanish list, behind Real Madrid and Barcelona and clear of everyone else.

Luis Suarez

The signing most associated with the title arrived before the season started: Luis Suarez, from Barcelona, on 25 September 2020.

A striker bought from a direct rival, in the season that rival’s dominance was interrupted, is the kind of transfer that gets remembered whatever the numbers say. The player profiles hold the individual records.

The Longest Tenure

Diego Simeone has managed the club since 23 December 2011. Measured against the turnover normal at clubs of comparable size, that is the single most unusual fact about the modern institution: longer than the gap between the 1996 Double and the 2014 title, and longer than the entire Gil-era period that shaped the club’s public image.

Two league titles, two Champions League finals, a Europa League, a Super Cup and a Copa del Rey have been won or reached under him. The honours list shows how much of the cabinet is his.

The Ground Keeps Being Renamed

The stadium has carried three sponsor names since 2016: Wanda Metropolitano from that year, Civitas Metropolitano from 2022, and Riyadh Air Metropolitano since 9 October 2024.

Capacity has moved in the same period: 68,456 at the 2017 reopening, 70,460 by September 2023, and 70,692 after skyboxes, expanded VIP seating and a disability platform were added. The attendance record stands at 70,112, set against Real Madrid on 29 September 2024, and the ground will host the Champions League final in 2027, announced on 11 September 2025.

Anyone quoting a name or a capacity for this stadium should date it, which the Metropolitano page does throughout.

Measuring an Era That Is Still Running

Writing about a period that has not finished carries an obvious hazard, so it is worth separating what is settled from what is not.

Settled: the eleventh league title, won in 2020–21 and sealed at Valladolid. A Copa del Rey final reached and lost in 2025–26, the twentieth final in the club’s history, which leaves that competition’s record exactly level at ten wins and ten defeats. A stadium that has been renamed twice inside the period and expanded three times. A manager in post since December 2011.

Not settled: everything about how this era will eventually be read.

The Comparison That Keeps Being Made

Two league titles seven years apart, in 2014 and 2021, is a rate no other period in the club’s history matches except the twelve seasons from 1965–66 to 1976–77, which produced four. The league record makes the comparison easy: those two stretches are the only ones in which Atletico won more than one championship without a gap of two decades in between.

What the current era has not produced is a European trophy. The last was the 2018 Super Cup, which belongs to the previous period, and the six European honours won between 2010 and 2018 remain, for now, a closed sequence.

2027

The one dated item in the future is a fixture. The Metropolitano will host the Champions League final on a date announced on 11 September 2025, a match in a competition this club has reached the final of three times, in 1974, 2014 and 2016, and lost every time.

The three finals are covered together, and the prospect of a fourth being played in the club’s own stadium is the kind of detail Atletico’s history tends to produce.

Where the Era Stands

One league title, a Copa del Rey final lost in 2025–26, and a manager still in post. The club that won its eleventh championship had been in the second division within the memory of most of its supporters, which is the fact the whole club history is arranged around.

Whether this era is eventually read as a peak or a plateau depends on things that have not happened yet. What can be said now is that it opened with the eleventh title and that the Metropolitano has a Champions League final booked for 2027, a competition the club has reached the final of three times and never won.