SUSunderland
SUSunderland has reached the english top-flight champions decider 11 times on record, first in 1891-92 and most recently in 1935-36. 6 wins against 5 runner-up finishes are recorded below, sourced from our full english top-flight champions list.
Data last verified: 11 August 2026.
SUSunderland — 6 english top-flight champions (1891-92, 1892-93, 1894-95, 1901-02, 1912-13, 1935-36).
Club history
Sunderland Association Football Club traces its roots to October 1879, when it was formed as the Sunderland and District Teachers' Association Football Club before opening its membership to the wider public the following year -- a dual origin that leaves historians divided over whether 1879 or 1880 is the true foundation date. The club's now-official identity, the Black Cats, was adopted only in 2000 following a supporters' vote, drawing on a local legend of a black cat that lived at Roker Park in the early 1900s; older alternatives Mackems and Wearsiders remain in everyday use.
Sunderland played at Blue House Field and then Newcastle Road before settling at Roker Park in 1898, their evocative home for 99 years until the move to the Stadium of Light in 1997. The club's golden age came before the First World War and again in the interwar years, winning six League Championships (1892, 1893, 1895, 1902, 1913 and 1936) and earning the nickname the "Team of All the Talents" for their attacking football. A first FA Cup arrived in 1937, and their most famous triumph came as unfancied Second Division underdogs in 1973, beating Don Revie's Leeds United at Wembley.
Decline set in from the 1958 relegation, precipitated by an illegal-payments scandal, and the following decades brought yo-yoing form and successive relegations from the Premier League to League One in 2017-18 amid heavy debt. Kyril Louis-Dreyfus took control in 2021 and steered the club back to the Premier League in 2025. Sunderland's fiercest rivalry is the Tyne-Wear derby against Newcastle United, contested since 1898.
Sourcing caveat: Sources disagree on the club's exact founding date: some (including the club itself in earlier eras) cite 1879, when it began as a teachers' association team, while others treat 1880 -- when membership opened beyond teachers and the club was formally reconstituted -- as the true birth of Sunderland AFC.
Sources
English Top-Flight Champions won (6)
- 1891-92
- 1892-93
- 1894-95
- 1901-02
- 1912-13
- 1935-36
Runner-up finishes (5)
- 1893-94
- 1897-98
- 1900-01
- 1922-23
- 1934-35
See the full english top-flight champions list for the winner each of these years.
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