The Premier League is one of the most predictable football divisions on the planet… hence why hundreds of millions of fans around the globe tune in each week. But there are some trends and patterns that remain the same from one season to the next, including the number of points that need to be won in order to stave off the threat of relegation to the Championship.
There are always anomalies, of course, with some campaigns requiring higher-than-average points tallies to stay up; in others, your club might just get away with slipping below the mean and still avoiding the drop. But, as a general rule, here’s a guide to the points total that it takes to avoid relegation from the Premier League.
How Many Points Do You Need to Stay Up in the Premier League?
At the time of writing, there have been 30 seasons of Premier League football in which 20 teams have participated; for the purposes of this article, we’ve omitted the campaigns in which 22 clubs participated in the English top flight.
The Magic Number: 35.53
We have analysed how many points it would have taken to stay up in each of those seasons, creating an average across those 30 seasons. The magic number is 35.53. When rounding up or down, we learn that 35 points would have been enough to survive in 16/30 Premier League seasons – or 53%.
If we round upwards, 36 points would have been good enough to secure top-flight status in 18/30 of the seasons – or 60%. So, for more of a safety net, Premier League clubs in jeopardy of relegation should be targeting 36 points in order to greatly boost their chances of dodging demotion.
As we’ll explore later in this guide, there are some considerable anomalies to that, so 36 points should not be considered a guarantor of success – sometimes it can take significantly more, or fewer, points to survive. One of the most interesting developments over the years is that the number of points required to stay up has, generally, fallen since the establishment of the Premier League in the 1990s.
Points Needed to Survive in the First Five EPL Seasons
Here’s a look at the points tallies needed to survive in the first five seasons of the EPL in the 20-team era:
| Season | Points Needed |
|---|---|
| 1995/96 | 39 |
| 1996/97 | 41 |
| 1997/98 | 41 |
| 1998/99 | 37 |
| 1999/00 | 34 |
| Average | 38.4 points |
Points Needed to Survive in the Last Five Premier League Seasons
Now let’s take a look at the last five completed Premier League seasons at the time of writing:
| Season | Points Needed |
|---|---|
| 2020/21 | 29 |
| 2021/22 | 36 |
| 2022/23 | 35 |
| 2023/24 | 27 |
| 2024/25 | 26 |
| Average | 30.6 points |
As you can see, that’s a considerable differential: today, it takes roughly eight points fewer to stay up than it did in the Premier League’s formative years. But why?
Why Do You Need Fewer Points Nowadays?
There is no single reason. However, one idea may be that the gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ has gotten wider. The stronger teams win more games against the weaker teams, which may have not been the case so much in the 1990s – in those days, even those in fear of relegation had the quality to take points off those battling for the title.
It’s a concept that is lent weight by the idea that the promoted teams from the Championship find it harder and harder to adjust to life in the Premier League, which is why their points tallied might be lower than in years gone by. Of course, that isn’t an exact science – anomalies like Sunderland and, to an extent, Leeds United in 2025/26 are testament to that, but otherwise the numbers speak for themselves.
In 27 Premier League seasons, at least one promoted club has been instantly relegated back to the second tier. In both 2023/24 and 2024/25, all three promoted sides were sent back down through the trapdoor at the first time of asking.
What’s the Average Number of Points Needed?
To answer the original question, 36 points is – on average – what it takes to avoid Premier League relegation. But in recent seasons, that average has started to shrink by a considerable margin.
What Is the Highest Points Tally to Be Relegated from the Premier League?
For all that, every EPL season is unique… as West Ham found out to their cost in 2002/03. The Hammers amassed 42 points, with ten wins and 12 draws from their 38 games. Their goal difference of -17 was pretty decent for a team with such a record, too.
But it wasn’t enough. West Ham finished in eighteenth place and were thus relegated, with Bolton Wanderers finishing one place above them on 44 points. The other two relegated sides, Sunderland and West Brom, mustered just 19 and 26 points, respectively.
That 42-point haul remains a Premier League record for a relegated team more than two decades later. Only two other teams have been relegated from the EPL after reaching the 40-point mark: Sunderland in 1996/97 and Bolton in 1997/98.
What Is the Lowest Points Total to Have Avoided Premier League Relegation?
On the flipside, some Premier League clubs have survived relegation despite only amassing 35 points… or fewer. On three occasions, 35 has been enough to secure top-flight status. Hull City were the first to do so in 2008/09, with the three relegated clubs – West Brom, Middlesbrough and Newcastle – getting to 32, 32 and 34 points, respectively.
The Tigers were followed the very next season by West Ham, who survived on 35 points. Remarkably, it was comfortable survival, with a five-point margin separating them from the demoted Burnley.
More recently, Aston Villa managed to stay up at the culmination of the 2019/20 campaign with just 35 points to their name. They kept their head above water by just a solitary point from Bournemouth and Watford, who painstakingly finished on 34 points.
But one team can best all of the above, somehow surviving the drop despite clinching just 34 points during the 2004/05 campaign. In every other Premier League season in history, West Brom would have been relegated with such a meagre total. But 2004/05 was unique alright, with every side embroiled in the demotion scrap still capable of staying up heading into the final game of the campaign.
The Baggies’ 2-0 victory over Portsmouth took them to 34 points… two clear of Southampton and one ahead of Crystal Palace and Norwich City in one of the Premier League’s most fascinating seasonal finales.
