How Hearts Lost The Title After 250 Days On Top

Football is more cruel than kind. Being 90 minutes from glory is also being 90 minutes from devastation, and for most fans, devastation is much more familiar. But once in a lifetime, an opportunity comes around to reverse the curse and win the trophy that makes it all worth it.

For Hearts, that was the 2025/26 season. With two games to play, they needed four points to secure the Scottish Premiership title. Four points to end 66 years of hurt and cure 40 years of pain following their last failed attempt. A draw to break four decades of Old Firm dominance.

Eli Mengem travelled to Edinburgh for the final two games of 2025/26’s greatest story as Hearts faced Falkirk and then Celtic, the only side who could deny them their dreams. He captured a uniquely intense week in the Scottish capital in which Jambos fans experienced football’s full range of emotions, from elation to despair, and everything in between.