Arsenal and Al-Hilal are finalising a package worth over £56m for Gabriel Martinelli, with the winger having given his green light to the move and his medical now booked for this weekend. That is according to Fabrizio Romano, and while the deal has reached what he describes as its last stages, contracts are still being checked rather than signed, this is an advanced negotiation, not yet a completed transfer.
Romano posted the update on X on August 28, 2026: “Understand Gabriel Martinelli has given green light to Al Hilal move as contracts are being checked. Al Hilal and Arsenal finalising package over €65m as now all moving to the last stages of negotiations. Martinelli’s medical will be booked soon.” Since then, CBS Sports and TEAMtalk have both confirmed the medical is now scheduled to take place this weekend in Saudi Arabia, with Al-Hilal hoping to announce the transfer shortly after.
The £56m Package And Arsenal’s Record Sales
Should it go through, the reported fee would be by far Arsenal’s biggest ever transfer fee received. The current benchmark is Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain’s £35m move to Liverpool in 2017, with Nicolas Anelka’s move to Real Madrid in 1999 and Alexis Sanchez’s Manchester United transfer in 2018 also ranking among the club’s historic top sales.
Arsenal won’t bank the entire fee, however. The club agreed a sell-on clause with Ituano, Martinelli’s boyhood club in Brazil, when they signed him for around £6m back in 2019, meaning a percentage of any sale is contractually owed back to the Brazilian side.
Arteta Addresses The Martinelli Situation
Mikel Arteta has spoken publicly about the move without confirming it. “That’s a personal situation that we are dealing with,” the Arsenal manager said, drawing a comparison to how the club has also handled Gabriel Jesus’s reduced training role this week. “Everybody knows and recognizes how much we love Gabi. Whatever the outcome is, it will be because everyone agrees to that.”
Martinelli trained with his Arsenal teammates on Friday morning, but he was left out of the matchday squad for both the Community Shield and the Premier League opener against Coventry City, with his spot on the left wing already going elsewhere as Arteta reshapes his attack.
Arsenal Weigh Record Income Against Wing Depth
Arsenal have taken plenty of criticism over the years for failing to extract full value from departing players, so a fee north of £56m for a 25-year-old widely seen as out of form this season would be read as a rare win on that front. Martinelli managed just one Premier League goal last season, though he found the net six times in the Champions League as Arteta’s side reached the final.
The obvious complication is squad depth. Christos Tzolis arrived earlier in the summer as the replacement for Leandro Trossard, and losing Martinelli on top of that would leave Arteta relatively light on left-sided options, a point worth weighing against Arsenal’s broader squad-planning decisions this window. Whether that pushes the club into the market for another winger before deadline day remains to be seen.
Martinelli’s Green Light, After Turning Down Galatasaray
From the player’s side, the key detail is that Martinelli has already signed off on the move, having previously turned down interest from Galatasaray, a saga this site has followed closely as it developed over recent weeks. He only became receptive to a move once Al-Hilal entered the picture directly, having prioritised him ahead of other targets including Chelsea’s Pedro Neto and Porto’s Francisco Conceição.
This is also shaping up as a Premier League double capture for Al-Hilal. The Saudi club are simultaneously closing in on Aston Villa’s Ollie Watkins in a separate deal worth just over £50m, with both players expected to be confirmed around the same time this weekend. Al-Hilal have already spent close to €64.5m on West Ham winger Crysencio Summerville this window as part of a wider squad rebuild under new head coach Simone Inzaghi, following the departure of players including Malcom.
Where Things Stand
Every marker Romano has laid out, player consent, contracts being checked, a medical now booked for this weekend, points to a deal that is very close to completion. Until the medical is actually passed and the paperwork is signed, this remains a reported move rather than an official one.
If it does land at over £56m, Arsenal will have smashed their own sales record by a wide margin, which by most reasonable readings is sound business for a player who struggled for regular goals in the league last season. The catch is obvious: Arteta now has a wing-depth question to answer, and how quickly Arsenal move to address it will say a lot about how the rest of their window unfolds.
