The early portion of the 2025/26 Scottish Premiership season has shaped up in electric fashion.
Scotland’s top flight is dominated nearly every season by one or both of the league’s giant clubs Celtic and Rangers, both located in Glasgow.
However, this year, Rangers have struggled mightily out of the gates, while Celtic have also suffered slips through the month of October. Now nine games into the new campaign, it is Heart of Midlothian who sit atop the domestic table, with 25 out of a possible 27 points thus far.
After Hearts defeated Celtic 3-1 on October 26, dreams of a league title are dancing in the heads of supporters who are enjoying their seven-point lead over Brendan Rodgers’ reigning champions.
The Sporting News takes a look back decades ago at the last time a Scottish club other than Celtic or Rangers won the domestic league title.
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Last time Celtic and Rangers didn’t win Scottish title
The last time the Scottish Premiership was not won by Celtic or Rangers was all the way back in 1984/85 when Aberdeen won two league championships in a row.
The title-winning manager that year with Aberdeen was none other than Sir Alex Ferguson, who claimed the last of his three league titles before joining Manchester United in 1986.
Since then, Celtic and Rangers have combined to win the last 40 league titles, with Rangers winning 17 and Celtic winning 23.
How many Scottish Premiership titles Celtic and Rangers won
In the 128 previous editions of the Scottish Premiership coming into the 2025/26 season, Celtic and Rangers have combined to win 110 of the league titles.
Incredibly, those titles are evenly split between the clubs, with both Celtic and Rangers dead even on 55 titles apiece.
Rangers’ run of nine in a row between 1988/89 and 1996/97 helped them open up a lead, but Celtic hauled in most of that advantage with nine successive triumphs of their own from 2011/12 to 2019/20. During the latter period, Rangers did not compete in the Premiership between 2012 and 2016, when the club went into liquidation and were forced to re-enter the Scottish Football League in the fourth tier.
All other clubs have combined to win 19 league titles, with Aberdeen, Hearts and Hibernian each winning four. Dumbarton have won two (including one shared with Rangers in 1891) while Motherwell, Kilmarnock, Dundee, Dundee United, and Third Lanark have all won one.
Have Hearts ever won the Scottish Premiership league title?
Yes, Heart of Midlothian have won four Scottish domestic league titles in club history, albeit it’s been quite some time.
The first Hearts league title came way back in 1894/95, which was just the fifth-ever officially recognised domestic league title. They won again two years later in 1896/97, and then would need to wait over a half century for their next domestic crown.
The third Hearts league championship came in 1957/58, before they again triumphed two years later in 1959/60, their most recent league championship.
Since then, Hearts have finished second on five separate occasions, coming closest in 1964/65 when they finished level on points with Kilmarnock but fell short of the league title thanks to that season’s tiebreaker metric of goal average. Had goal difference been the tiebreaker at the time, Hearts would have won the title.
They also lost the title via a tiebreaker in 1985/86, when they again finished level on points with the champion, this time being Celtic, but their +26 goal differential fell short of Celtic’s +29.
