Every list of the PSG most expensive signings starts in the same place: a summer night in 2017, a release clause paid in full, and a transfer market that never quite recovered. Neymar’s €222m move from Barcelona is still the biggest fee any club has paid for any footballer, and it is still Paris Saint-Germain’s.
What comes after it is more interesting. Fifteen years of Qatar Sports Investments money has produced a top 10 that runs from world-record vanity to the sort of considered, twenty-something signings Luis Enrique has built the current European champions around. Here is the full ranking, with the reasoning behind each deal.
A note on the numbers
Transfer fees in France are rarely confirmed to the euro. Clubs announce a headline figure, agents brief a different one, and add-ons tied to appearances and trophies can move a deal by €10m or more years after it is signed. Every figure below is the widely reported fee, not an official club statement, and the order reflects those reported totals. PSG themselves have never published a definitive list.
The PSG most expensive signings: the top 10
- Neymar — Barcelona, 2017 — €222m
- Kylian Mbappe — Monaco, 2018 — around €180m
- Randal Kolo Muani — Eintracht Frankfurt, 2023 — up to €90m
- Khvicha Kvaratskhelia — Napoli, 2025 — around €70m
- Goncalo Ramos — Benfica, 2023 — around €65m
- Edinson Cavani — Napoli, 2013 — around €64.5m
- Angel Di Maria — Manchester United, 2015 — around €63m
- Achraf Hakimi — Inter, 2021 — around €60m
- Manuel Ugarte — Sporting CP, 2023 — around €60m
- Joao Neves — Benfica, 2024 — around €60m
Neymar, €222m, and the clause nobody thought would be paid
The detail people forget about the Neymar deal is that Barcelona never agreed to it. There were no negotiations, no compromise fee, no structured instalments. His release clause was €222m, Paris paid it, and the Spanish league spent weeks trying to refuse the money.
It doubled the previous world record overnight and it remains unbeaten nearly a decade on. Neymar gave PSG five seasons, a pile of Ligue 1 titles and the 2020 Champions League final, then left for Saudi Arabia in 2023 without the European Cup the fee was meant to buy. That trophy arrived later, and with a very different squad.
Mbappe: the second-biggest fee in history, for a teenager
The Kylian Mbappe transfer was structured to satisfy Financial Fair Play — a season-long loan from Monaco in 2017/18, then an obligation to buy that made him permanent in 2018 for a reported €180m all in. He was 19. He left on a free transfer for Real Madrid in 2024 as PSG’s all-time leading goalscorer, which is either the best or the worst piece of business in the club’s history depending on which part of the story you stop at.
Those two deals account for more than €400m between them. Nothing else PSG have done comes close, and the club’s spending has looked nothing like it since.
The centre-forward problem, in three expensive parts
Three of the next four names on the list were bought to solve the same thing. Kolo Muani arrived from Frankfurt on 2023 deadline day for a fee reported at up to €90m; Goncalo Ramos came from Benfica in the same window on a loan that became a permanent deal worth around €65m. Neither settled. Kolo Muani left permanently for Juventus and Ramos joined AC Milan in the summer of 2026, and Paris went into this season with Ferran Torres leading the line instead, signed from Barcelona for €48.5m.
Cavani, at €64.5m from Napoli in 2013, is the one that worked. He scored more goals for PSG than anyone except Mbappe and stayed seven years. Di Maria, bought for around €63m from a miserable single season at Manchester United, is the other: 295 appearances, more assists than any player in the club’s history, and a case for being the shrewdest of all the big-money buys.
Kvaratskhelia and the modern model
The most recent entry in the top five is the one that best explains where the club is now. Khvicha Kvaratskhelia cost around €70m from Napoli in January 2025 — a serious fee, but for a 23-year-old winger bought to fit a system rather than to sell shirts. He was a Champions League winner within five months.
The same logic produced Joao Neves at around €60m from Benfica in 2024 and Achraf Hakimi at around €60m from Inter in 2021, both of whom are now core members of a side that has retained the European Cup. Ugarte, the other €60m man, is the exception — a release clause paid to Sporting in 2023 for a holding midfielder who lasted a single season before moving to Manchester United.
Just outside: the €45-50m bracket
The band immediately below the top 10 is crowded, and increasingly it is where PSG do their business. Mauro Icardi’s permanent move from Inter in 2020 and David Luiz’s 2014 arrival from Chelsea both landed around the €50m mark. Desire Doue cost a similar figure from Rennes in 2024 and was man of the match in a Champions League final before his 20th birthday.
The summer of 2026 stayed in exactly that range: Maghnes Akliouche from Monaco for €50m, Ferran Torres from Barcelona for €48.5m, Mika Godts from Ajax for around €45m and Lucas Digne back from Aston Villa for roughly €7m. Not one of them would trouble the top 10. All of it was part-funded by the sales that went the other way, including Bradley Barcola’s deadline-day move to Liverpool.
What the list actually shows
Read top to bottom, the ranking is a history of two different clubs. The first bought reputations, paid world-record fees for finished superstars and did not win the Champions League. The second buys 21-to-25-year-olds in the €45-70m bracket, sells aggressively, and has now won it twice in a row.
The financial side of that shift is measurable: our look at PSG’s €207m transfer balance, drawn from the CIES Football Observatory, shows a club still spending heavily but recouping far more than it used to. The sporting side is simpler. Neymar’s €222m will probably sit at the top of this list for years yet. It is no longer the deal that defines how Paris Saint-Germain build a team.
For the current picture, see our full 2026/27 PSG squad list and our guide to every in and out of the 2026 window.
