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The dust is settling on a turbulent 2025/26 campaign for Nottingham Forest, with the Reds still a Premier League club.
If you’d said to fans four years ago after promotion to the top-flight that the Reds would still be in the league and be on the back of a season in the Europa League, most would have laughed.
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With the threat of relegation staved off during 2025/26, Forest can now look forward to next season, when Vitor Pereira will hope to take the club forward.
Forest will go in search of up to six new players this summer and with Premier League football to look forward to, fans are wondering how much there will be to spend.
Photo by Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty ImagesNottingham Forest on course for club-record revenue boost
With the transfer links starting to emerge, we asked Football Finance Expert, Adam Williams, what the state of play was behind the scenes, and it would appear as though the club are on track for a club-record revenue.
He’s also lifted the lid on how much Forest might have to spend this summer and it’s perhaps going to be a summer where the club is more stringent in the transfer market.
Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images
Williams exclusively told us: “Forest probably got about £21m in prize money in the Europa League, plus maybe £7.5m in extra matchday revenue compared to the previous season. Let’s say commercial revenue rose by about 15 per cent, which looks fair when you look at their finances in recent seasons. That would give you an extra £7m or so in commercial income too.
“Against that, they finished much lower in the Premier League table than they did in 2024-25, but a lot of the difference in prize money will have been offset by the increase in the value of the Premier League’s central TV deal and commercial income. So I’d be fairly confident that they’ll hit £250m in revenue for the first time ever this season. There’s only a handful of clubs outside the so-called ‘Big Six’ who’ve ever actually done that.
“But revenue is ultimately a vanity metric, really. It’s actual cold, hard cash in the bank after you’ve paid your bills – wages, operating expenses, transfer debts – that is the real golden goose in terms of how much you can spend in any given summer.
“On that front, they lost £79m last season before Marinakis put money in to cover it, plus some extra income from transfers. On an operating basis, that will have improved a bit this season, but you’ve also got to look at transfer debts versus the money owed to them. Their net transfer debt was about £73m last season. You’re then betting blind to a certain extent in terms of how the money they spent and received for transfer business in 2025-26 is structured. But I’d be fairly confident that their net transfer debt will have widened substantially, and those are running costs that you have to shoulder. In layman’s terms, a £50m transfer in the headlines might be £20m up front, £15m in year two and another £15m in year three.
“They’ve refinanced some of their debts, and the owner has put in something close to £200m in recent years out of his own pocket, and I think all of these will be factors in how hard they go this summer. SCR shouldn’t be an immediate concern because the new system gives you the flexibility to exceed the 85 per cent cap if you make up for it in subsequent years.
All that is a very long way of saying that estimating their summer transfer budget is a how-long-is-a-piece-of-string exercise. But if I had to take an educated guess, I think it could be maybe £50-60m after sales, i.e., if they make, say, £30m in sales, they’ll then spend £80-90m thereafter.
Forest need plug-and-play Premier League options
The Reds need to make sure they get things right in the transfer market this summer.
With nine clubs playing in Europe next season, there will be a sense from a Forest perspective that things can go more positively for the club, and a European place can be chased down.
That’s going to be dependent on recruitment, however, and lessons need to be learned from 12 months ago.
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On that occasion, Forest signed 13 new players, with a number of them considered project players with one eye on the future.
That won’t do this time and some plug-and-play Premier League options could help Forest avoid a season of struggle and challenge for a place in one of the European competitions.
Based on what our finance expert has told us, there should be sufficient funds in order to do that ahead of the new season.
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