Deportivo’s Promotion 2025–26: How Dépor Finally Returned to La Liga

Promotion arrived on a Monday night in Valladolid, of all places. A 2–0 win at the José Zorrilla on the penultimate matchday of the 2025–26 Segunda División season sent Deportivo de La Coruña back to La Liga after eight years away, the club’s first top-flight campaign since relegation in 2017–18.

The final table shows 77 points from a 22-11-9 record, good for second place behind champions Racing Santander (82). Almería finished third with 74 and missed direct promotion; Málaga came through the play-offs. For most of the autumn it had looked like Dépor themselves might take the title: Antonio Hidalgo’s side topped the table for several weeks early in the campaign, with a 4–0 dismantling of Huesca on 19 September 2025 among the statement results of the entire division.

The Hidalgo effect

Hidalgo took charge on 10 June 2025, replacing Óscar Gilsanz, and inherited a squad that had stabilised in mid-table the season before. What changed was less the personnel than the conviction. This was a team that kept games alive late, defended its box properly, and, rare for a promotion side, never went through the kind of winter collapse that has undone so many Segunda front-runners. Nine defeats in 42 games tells its own story.

Whether Hidalgo gets enough credit outside Galicia is another question. Promotion coaches at historic clubs tend to be remembered as caretakers of an inevitability. That reading is too kind to the situation he walked into: three of the previous eight seasons had been spent in the third tier.

Yeremay, the difference

The individual season belonged to Yeremay Hernández: 11 goals and 10 assists in 35 league appearances, the club’s top scorer and its most-fouled outlet. The winger’s decision to stay for the promotion push, with half of Europe’s mid-table circling, may end up mattering as much as any single result. Numbers aside, he was the one player opponents built a game plan around.

Around him, the squad’s spine held up across ten months: goalkeeping stability, a centre-back pairing that conceded little in open play, and rotation up front that Hidalgo managed without public friction.

The night at Zorrilla

The 2–0 in Valladolid on 25 May 2026 was, fittingly, a road performance rather than a Riazor party. Thousands travelled anyway; A Coruña’s town hall square filled before the final whistle. The club that won La Liga in 2000 and lifted the Copa del Rey at the Bernabéu in 2002 had spent recent years playing Cerceda and Arosa in regional cups. That contrast, more than any statistic, is what promotion closed the book on.

One thread left hanging: Riazor itself. The stadium question (capacity, modernisation, what was promised during the World Cup bid discussions) did not get resolved by promotion, and it will follow the club into its La Liga return.

Season 2025–26 in numbers

Full season-by-season records are in the seasons archive; the squad’s individual pages are under players.