If you are a fan of a long-struggling sports team that has simply not won any silverware in quite some time (or ever), 2025 has been the year. From cricket to football and basketball, this year has seen some utterly remarkable first-time sporting triumphs.
Here's a list of 11 teams that ended title droughts (of differing lengths) in 2025:
Royal Challengers Bengaluru (M)
Let's start with the most recent entrant to the list, Indian Premier League side RCB. One of the most passionately followed teams in the league, RCB fans had been bearing the brunt of no-cups-for-you-haha jokes for 17 years... but no more. In their fourth IPL final, the men's team outclassed fellow non-trophy winners Punjab Kings with a fabulous bowling performance, beating them by six runs on June 3 to take win #1.
As Virat Kohli -- who has been with the franchise for all 18 years of its existence -- said in the local language Kannada, now 'ee saala cup namdu.' ['We've won the cup this year', a tribute to the RCB fan cult saying 'we'll win the cup this year'].
Crystal Palace
If you thought 18 years was long, how about 119?
On May 17, Crystal Palace beat Manchester City 1-0 in the FA Cup in one of the great football triumphs of our time.
Eberechi Eze scored the winner, Oliver Glasner masterminded the success, but what made it all so special is how everyone at the club dedicated the wins to the fans, a set of fans who have never gone into any season with any reasonable expectation of a trophy, fans who collect little moments like a goal against a big team away like they're precious gems. It was proper David vs Goliath stuff.
Bologna FC
115-year-old Bologna FC (and who play in very similar colours to Palace - red and blue stripe shirts) won their first trophy in 51 years with a stunning 1-0 win over giants AC Milan in the Coppa Italia.
Giants of the Italian game early on, especially in the pre-World War II years, Bologna had been meandering along for nearly half a century without getting close to any meaningful silverware before the 2024-25 Italian Cup competition came about. Goalscorer Dan Ndoye and coach Vincenzo Italiano are now heroes forever in the northern Italy city.
Go Ahead Eagles
The interestingly named Go Ahead Eagles, from the city of Deventer in the Netherlands, were a force to reckon with in the 1920s and 1930s but had never come close to threatening the big boys in domestic competition till 2025 came about.
In the Dutch Cup (KNVB Cup) this season, they defied expectations (and big betting odds) to beat PSV Eindhoven, FC Twente enroute a final where they beat AZ Alkmaar 4-2 on penalties thanks to heroics from goalkeeper Jari de Busser. It was their first major trophy since the 1933 league season and their first ever Dutch Cup win.
Royale Union St. Gilloise
Look at the number of league titles Union have won, 12, and you'd reckon they are giants of the Belgian game. But if you haven't really heard of them, it's not your fault -- because 11 of those titles came between 1904 and 1935. The 12th? You guessed it. In 2025, breaking a 90-year league title drought -- an achievement made even more remarkable by the fact that they were in the second division from 1972 to 2021.
Coached by Sebastian Pocognolia and captained by Luxembourg's Anthony Morris, they finished third in the league stage before topping the champions' playoffs (a top six-team round-robin) with nine wins in ten.
Tottenham Hotspur
A mini-drought compared to the other football teams on this list, Tottenham's story has been of so-close-yet-so-far for nearly two decades before they redeemed one of their worst league seasons in modern memory with a first trophy in 17 years: the 2025 Europa League.
A Brennan Johnson goal gave them a 1-0 win over Manchester United as coach Ange Postecoglou stayed true to his word: "I always win things in my second year."
VFB Stuttgart
Add one more year to the Spurs' drought, and you get the one ended by Stuttgart last week when they beat Arminia Bielefeld 4-2 in the DFB Pokal final to win their first trophy of any kind since the 2006-07 Bundesliga.
For young coach Sebastian Hoeness and the tens of thousands of Stuttgart fans, it was a redemption arc completed, after they had lost the 2024 Cup final to double-winners Bayer Leverkusen. It was their fourth Pokal crown, but first in 28 years.
Hobart Hurricanes
RCB aren't the only cricketing T20 franchise to have opened their scoring in 2025.
The Hurricanes have been around since the inaugural Big Bash League season in 2011 and were runners-up twice, till a 39-ball 100 from Mitchell Owen (108 off 42, with 11 sixes) saw them chase down the Sydney Thunder's 182 in a remarkable 14.1 overs. Not too shabby a way to hunt down the biggest target set in a BBL final and win your franchise's first ever title.
Paris Saint Germain FC
PSG have been around since 1970, and played their first European competition in 1982, but it was after initial investment from Canal+ (a French TV network) in 1991 that they became a force to reckon with in the UEFA Champions League. That soon dipped, but since 2011, when the Qatar Investment Authority took full control, expectations for them to land the big trophy have grown exponentially. Even as the dominated domestically, though, they had to wait a while for European glory.
But when it arrived on the night of May 31, 2025, their first Champions League triumph ever came in epic style: a 5-0 defenestration of Italian giants Inter Milan led by French wunderkind Desire Doue and the coaching genius of Luis Enrique.
Newcastle United FC
Newcastle United were always a big club, being as it was the lone club for a football-mad city to support, but they had had no new silverware in their cabinet since the 1954-55 FA Cup.
The 2017 takeover led by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund gave them impetus, but they had to wait till 2025 to break what had become a 70-year domestic title drought. Powered by boyhood Newcastle fan Dan Burn, the only locally born starter on either side, they beat runaway league champions Liverpool 2-1 to lift the Carabao Cup.
One of the Oklahoma City Thunder/Indiana Pacers
This one isn't over yet, but the winner will join this list anyway, so here goes:
The Indiana Pacers were one of the great franchises of the erstwhile ABA (pre-1976 when the ABA merged with the NBA), but they've never won an NBA title. They came close in 2000, but Reggie Miller and his team were stopped in their tracks by a Kobe Bryant-Shaquille O'Neal led LA Lakers.
In the NBA finals of 2025 they face the Oklahoma City Thunder, a team that have not won the NBA final either in their current iteration, though before they moved towns and rebranded in 2008, they had won the 1979 NBA title as the Seattle Supersonics.
Honourable mention (1): Harry Kane
This doesn't really fit in with the teams' theme, but how do we talk about 2025 ending trophy droughts without mentioning Harry Kane?
The England striker finally won his first ever piece of silverware when Bayern Munich won the Bundesliga (a much more frequent occurrence) this season and finished top scorer in the league by a country mile.
Honourable mention (2): Rory McIlroy
McIlroy won four Majors by the age of 25 and looked poised to challenge Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus at the very top of men's golf, but it took him another eleven years to win his fifth -- and he did it by winning the Masters for the first time ever.
He's now just the sixth golfer (first European) to complete a men's Career Grand Slam.