What are Manchester City's "115 charges", and what has happened so far?

The "115 charges" are the Premier League's accusations, brought in February 2023, that Manchester City breached its financial regulations: 80 charges about the years 2009 to 2018, and 35 about failing to co-operate with the league's investigation between 2018 and 2023. The club has always denied wrongdoing. On 29 September 2026 the Premier League said an independent commission had found City guilty of almost all of them; the punishment is still to be decided, and City has appealed.

A charge is not a finding, so it helps to keep the stages apart. The charges comprised 54 counts of failure to provide accurate financial information, 14 on accurate details of player and manager payments, 7 of breaching the Premier League's Profit and Sustainability Rules, 5 of breaching UEFA's Financial Fair Play regulations and 35 of failure to cooperate with league investigations. A three-person independent commission heard the case in private over ten weeks, from 16 September to 6 December 2024.

The background goes back to 2018, when Der Spiegel published reports based on leaked documents and emails, claiming they revealed evidence of backdated contracts, illusory sponsoring payments and cavalier business practices. Manchester City said it would not comment on out-of-context materials purportedly hacked or stolen, and that the attempt to damage the club's reputation was organised and clear. In February 2020 UEFA found City guilty of overstating its sponsorship revenue between 2012 and 2016 and barred it from the Champions League for two years, but the Court of Arbitration for Sport overturned the ban in July 2020 and reduced the fine to €10 million, finding most of the charges were either not established or time-barred.

On 29 September 2026 the Premier League confirmed the commission's findings: guilty of all the charges about its financial rules, and of most of those about failing to co-operate. The league said City had used "sham" contracts with commercial partners to inflate revenues and reduce costs by more than £900 million. The sanction will be set at a separate hearing. City, which has always denied wrongdoing, lodged an appeal on 1 October 2026, saying the opinion contains clear material errors of law, principle and fact. In October 2026 the UK's audit regulator, the Financial Reporting Council, told MPs it was making preliminary enquiries into whether there were grounds for a formal investigation into the audits of City by its auditor, BDO.