The Nottingham Forest transfers ledger for the summer of 2026 is now closed and final. The window shut at 11pm on Monday 1 September, deadline day passed without a single arrival at the City Ground, and Oliver Glasner knows exactly which players he will be working with until January. Six in, a long list out, and roughly £101million spent – by the standards of recent Forest windows, an unusually calm piece of business.
Here is every in and out in full, and what the finished squad tells us about the season ahead.
Nottingham Forest transfers in: six arrivals, ~£101m spent
The Nottingham Post’s full breakdown of the window puts the outlay at around £101m across six signings, five of them for the first team.
- Xaver Schlager (RB Leipzig, free) – the Austria midfielder arrived on a free transfer, a low-risk addition to the engine room and a player Glasner knew well from the Bundesliga.
- Ousmane Diomande (Sporting CP, reported £34m) – a four-year deal with the club holding an option of a further year. The centre-back was the window’s defensive centrepiece.
- Steven Benda (free agent) – back-up goalkeeper on a one-year contract with an option of another.
- Gustavo Sa (Famalicao) – a midfielder signed and immediately loaned back out. The deal was never announced by Forest.
- Liam Delap (Chelsea, club record) – an initial £45m on a five-year contract, with add-ons capable of taking the fee to a reported £50m. The club record went with it.
- Daniel Muñoz (Crystal Palace, reported £22m) – a three-year deal with an option of a further year for the Colombia right wing-back, reunited with the head coach he played under at Selhurst Park.
Two of those signings matter more than the rest. Delap is the striker Forest have been trying to buy since Taiwo Awoniyi’s exit, and he made his debut in the 2-2 draw at Anfield. Muñoz is the one arrival bought specifically to make a system work: Glasner’s 3-4-2-1 asks enormous mileage of its wing-backs, and the Reds paid a premium for a player who has already done exactly that job for this exact coach.
Nottingham Forest transfers out: the permanent departures
The outgoings column is where the summer’s real numbers sit. Forest banked a fee that dwarfs anything they spent.
- Elliot Anderson – sold to Manchester City for £116m, comfortably the biggest fee in the club’s history and, in effect, the money that funded this entire window. It reset the Reds’ record sales list at a stroke.
- Taiwo Awoniyi – sold to Coventry City on 17 August in a reported £9m deal, ending a Forest career that will be remembered for the goal that kept them up.
- David Carmo – joined Olympiacos. Forest did not announce the move and never confirmed its structure, though it is understood to be permanent.
- Jota Silva – also to Olympiacos, initially on loan and then made permanent.
- Omar Richards – joined Aris.
- Willy Boly, Angus Gunn, Stefan Ortega – all released at the end of their contracts.
- Lorenzo Lucca – loan expired and was not renewed.
The deadline-day loans that trimmed Glasner’s group
Forest’s final day of the window was entirely about subtraction, and all of it in the form of loans rather than sales – every one of these players remains a Forest player.
- Morato → West Ham United, season-long loan with an option to buy.
- Zach Abbott → Southampton, season-long loan – but only after the academy defender signed fresh terms at the City Ground until 2030. That combination, a new contract and a Championship season of football, was the good-news story of deadline day.
- Omari Hutchinson → AC Milan, season loan with a reported €40m option to buy. A former club-record signing leaving on loan after a single substitute appearance this season is a reminder of how fast this squad has turned over.
- Dilane Bakwa → Lille; Eric da Silva Moreira → Excelsior; Josh Powell → Northampton Town.
None of it was accidental. Glasner has consistently said he prefers a smaller group, and with no European football to plan for and an early Carabao Cup exit at the hands of Leeds United, there is no fixture list to justify carrying 25 senior players. Speaking after the Liverpool draw, the head coach set out the arithmetic himself: “Let’s see, if we have definitely one, potentially two and probably three signings, it would just make sense if we have definitely one, potentially two, probably three players who will leave us,” he said, as reported by the Nottingham Post. He got the outgoings. The extra arrivals never came.
The deals that did not happen
Two near-misses will be re-litigated on Trentside for a while yet.
The first was Harrison Armstrong. Forest’s reported £40m move for the Everton teenager reached an advanced stage before collapsing amid a fierce backlash from Everton supporters; the 19-year-old stayed at Goodison. The second was Jacob Murphy. An opening £10m bid for the Newcastle United winger was turned down at the weekend and a second, worth a reported £15m, was rejected before the deadline.
Beyond those, the summer’s link list was long and largely fruitless – Dodô, Nicolò Fagioli, Marc Casado, Youssouf Fofana, Andre at Corinthians, and a late flirtation with a new goalkeeper that produced nothing. Forest looked hardest of all for a midfielder and finished the window without one beyond Schlager’s free transfer.
So was this a good Nottingham Forest window?
That is the argument dividing the fanbase this week, and the honest answer is that it depends which column you read first.
The case for: Forest sold their most valuable player for £116m and reinvested less than that, added a club-record striker, upgraded a key position in Muñoz, landed a £34m centre-back and a free-transfer international midfielder, and did not spend a penny in panic on the final day. There was no trolley dash. As the Nottingham Post’s Sarah Clapson observed, this was a more mature, more considered Forest than the one supporters have grown used to watching in the last hours of a window – boring, perhaps, but deliberate.
The case against: the Anderson-shaped hole in midfield is still there. Ibrahim Sangaré, Nicolás Domínguez, Schlager, captain Ryan Yates and James McAtee are a functional group rather than a deep one, and the two players who might have changed that – Armstrong and Murphy – both stayed put. Centre-back cover is thinner still: with Morato and Abbott gone on loan, Jair Cunha is the only natural back-up to the first-choice three. Forest are one bad afternoon away from improvising, and the next chance to fix it is January.
What happens next
The squad is set, shirt numbers and all, and the noise of the market is finally out of the way. That may be the most useful thing about Monday night: after a start that has brought a home defeat to Leeds, a cup exit to the same opponent and a much-improved 2-2 at Liverpool, Glasner can spend a full week coaching a settled group rather than fielding questions about who else is coming.
He needs to. The Reds are still without a win in 2026/27, and Tottenham Hotspur visit the City Ground on Saturday at 3pm. However the window is scored on paper, three points would do far more for the mood than any deal that got away.
