Atletico Madrid La Liga Titles: All Eleven Championships by Season

Eleven La Liga championships, spread across eighty-one years, and no two of them arriving the same way. The pattern is what makes the list worth reading: Atletico Madrid have never been a club that wins the league steadily. They win it in pairs, then not at all for a generation, then again.

The Eleven Titles

The first two came immediately and together. Athletic Aviación de Madrid won the 1939–40 championship in the club’s first season under that name, having merged with the air force club Aviación Nacional, and retained it in 1940–41. Both were won under Ricardo Zamora, the goalkeeper-turned-manager whose name is still on Spanish football’s award for the best goalkeeping record in a season.

The second pair came a decade later. Helenio Herrera, who would go on to build the Internazionale side of the 1960s, managed the club to consecutive titles in 1949–50 and 1950–51, with the Moroccan-French forward Larbi Ben Barek in the team.

Then the club’s most sustained run. The 1965–66 title was the last won at the old Metropolitano; three more followed at the new ground on the Manzanares in 1969–70, 1972–73 and 1976–77. Four championships in twelve seasons is the closest Atletico have come to a dynasty.

The 1976–77 title was followed by nineteen years without one. That gap ended in 1995–96, the season Radomir Antić’s side won the league and the Copa del Rey together, the only Double in the club’s history.

Another eighteen years passed before 2013–14, sealed by a 1–1 draw at the Camp Nou on 17 May 2014 in the last match of the season. The eleventh arrived in 2020–21, confirmed with a 2–1 win at Valladolid on 22 May 2021, again on the final afternoon.

How Many La Liga Titles Has Atletico Madrid Won?

Eleven. That places the club third in the all-time table of Spanish champions, behind Real Madrid and Barcelona and clear of everyone else, a position that has been stable for decades and says something specific about Atletico’s history. They are not one of the two clubs that dominate Spanish football, and they are not in the group competing to be the best of the rest. They occupy a tier of their own with nobody in it.

The Ten Seasons They Finished Second

Runner-up finishes came in 1943–44, 1957–58, 1960–61, 1962–63, 1964–65, 1973–74, 1984–85, 1990–91, 2017–18 and 2018–19.

Read alongside the titles, the second places explain the club’s reputation better than the championships do. Three of them, in 1960–61, 1962–63 and 1964–65, fall in a decade when the club was consistently among the best in Spain and won the league once. The 1973–74 runner-up finish came in the same season as the European Cup final. The back-to-back seconds of 2017–18 and 2018–19 came at the height of the Simeone era, between the two titles.

Twenty-one top-two finishes in total, of which eleven were championships. The club has been close far more often than the trophy count alone suggests.

The Two Long Gaps

Nineteen years between 1977 and 1996, then eighteen between 1996 and 2014. Together those two droughts account for thirty-seven of the years in this list, and they cover the period in which most current supporters formed their idea of the club.

The first gap contains the Jesús Gil presidency from 1987 and the arrival of Paulo Futre, a period the club history describes as personality instead of prizes. The second contains a relegation. Atletico went down in 1999–2000, spent two seasons in the Segunda División and came back as champions of it in 2001–02, the only line on the honours list that records a promotion rather than a triumph, and the one that puts the rest in perspective.

That the eleventh title came from a club that had been in the second division within living memory is the point of the whole sequence. The full honours list sets the league record alongside the cups and the European nights.

How many La Liga titles has Atletico Madrid won?

Eleven: 1939–40, 1940–41, 1949–50, 1950–51, 1965–66, 1969–70, 1972–73, 1976–77, 1995–96, 2013–14 and 2020–21. That is third in the all-time list of Spanish champions.

When did Atletico Madrid last win La Liga?

In 2020–21, confirmed with a 2–1 win at Valladolid on 22 May 2021, the final match of the season. It was the club's second title under Diego Simeone.

How long was the gap between Atletico's league titles?

Two long ones: nineteen years between 1976–77 and 1995–96, and eighteen between 1995–96 and 2013–14. The second gap includes relegation in 1999–2000 and two seasons in the Segunda División.

How many times have Atletico finished second in La Liga?

Ten: 1943–44, 1957–58, 1960–61, 1962–63, 1964–65, 1973–74, 1984–85, 1990–91, 2017–18 and 2018–19. Twenty-one top-two finishes in total.

Who managed Atletico to their first La Liga title?

Ricardo Zamora, in 1939–40, the club's first season as Athletic Aviación de Madrid after the merger with Aviación Nacional. He retained the title the following season.