On November 19, 2025, Arsenal and the Rwanda Development Board announced they had agreed to end their sponsorship partnership in June 2026. For eight seasons, "Visit Rwanda" appeared on the left sleeve of every Arsenal shirt, men's, women's, and under-23 kits included.
Both sides released statements. Neither statement mentions the criticism that had been building around the deal for close to two years. Separately, a number of documented events took place over that same stretch of time. This piece lays both out side by side. What you make of the timing is a separate question, and one this piece isn't going to answer for you.
What was officially said
Arsenal's chief executive, Richard Garlick, called the partnership "a significant journey" and said Visit Rwanda had helped the club invest in its long-term plans in a financially sustainable way.
Rwanda Development Board CEO Jean-Guy Afrika said the deal "broke new ground for tourism boards around the world," crediting it with driving awareness and visitation at a pace he said traditional marketing couldn't match. Rwanda's official framing, repeated across its statements, is that this is part of a broader strategy to "diversify" its global sports partnerships and move into new markets.
That is the entire public record of stated reasons from either party. No further explanation has been given by Arsenal or by the Rwanda Development Board.
What else happened, on the record, before that announcement
The following events are documented independently, through news reporting, court records, and statements from named officials. None of them are Arsenal's or Rwanda's own explanation for the sponsorship ending. They are simply things that happened.
2023. The UK Supreme Court ruled that the British government's plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda was unlawful. In his ruling, the court's president referenced Rwanda's "poor human rights record." Arsenal did not change its sponsorship arrangement at the time.
Ongoing conflict in eastern Congo. The United Nations and human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, have reported that Rwanda has backed the M23 rebel group in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and that M23 has been linked to killings, mass displacement, and the recruitment of child soldiers. Rwanda disputes the characterization of its role, saying it is acting to protect Congolese Tutsis and defend against militias tied to the 1994 genocide.
February 2025. Bayern Munich fans displayed a banner at a home match protesting the club's own Visit Rwanda sponsorship, which had started in 2023 and was contracted to run until 2028.
August 2025. Bayern Munich announced it was restructuring that deal, moving away from stadium branding and toward funding a youth academy in Kigali instead. Bayern's chief executive, Jan-Christian Dreesen, described it as building on "the developmental nature" of the club's existing work in Rwanda. German outlets reported at the time that the change followed sustained fan pressure tied to the Congo conflict.
August 2025. DRC Foreign Minister Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner publicly called on Arsenal, Bayern Munich, and Paris Saint-Germain to end what she called their "blood-stained" sponsorship deals with Visit Rwanda. She said she had written to Arsenal requesting a meeting and received no response.
Around the same period. An Arsenal supporter group calling itself Gunners for Peace organized protests against the sponsorship and raised the issue at club fan advisory meetings.
Rwanda's response to the criticism. Rwanda publicly rejected the DRC minister's characterization, and separately described the broader criticism of its Arsenal, Bayern, and PSG deals as a threat to regional peace and stability, according to Reuters.
September 29, 2025, two months before the Arsenal ending was announced. Visit Rwanda signed new multi-year sponsorship deals with the Los Angeles Rams and the LA Clippers, both under the ownership of Stan Kroenke, who also owns Arsenal. The Rams deal makes Visit Rwanda an official tourism sponsor of SoFi Stadium and the surrounding Hollywood Park development. The Clippers deal makes Visit Rwanda the team's exclusive jersey patch sponsor and the official sponsor of Intuit Dome.
November 19, 2025. Arsenal and the Rwanda Development Board announce the sponsorship will end in June 2026.
Laid end to end, that's the sequence: a court ruling, an ongoing war with documented allegations against Rwanda, a foreign minister's public campaign naming Arsenal directly, an Arsenal fan group organizing against the deal, a peer club scaling back an identical sponsorship for stated reasons tied to that same conflict, new sponsorship deals signed with a different set of teams under the same ownership group, and then the Arsenal deal ending two months later.
Whether that sequence is cause and effect, coincidence, or some mix of both is not something either party has stated on the record. It's worth sitting with that gap rather than filling it in.
What is confirmed about the deal's commercial size
Arsenal's most recent Visit Rwanda deal was reported by Reuters to be worth more than £10 million ($12 million) a year. The original 2018 agreement was a three-year deal, extended in 2021 through 2025, and then extended again to conclude in June 2026. Club accounts for the 2023-24 season put the value at roughly £10 million for that year.
Reports ahead of the announcement suggested Arsenal was positioning itself to negotiate a new sleeve sponsor in the £15 to 20 million range, which would place the club among the higher-value sleeve deals in the Premier League, behind Manchester United and Manchester City. No replacement sponsor has been confirmed as of the deal's announcement.
What is confirmed about Rwanda's tourism numbers
According to the Rwanda Development Board's own annual reporting:
- Tourism revenue reached $685 million in 2025, up from $647 million in 2024, an increase of about 6 percent.
- Visitor arrivals reached 1.49 million in 2025, up from 1.36 million in 2024, an increase of about 9 percent.
- Air arrivals grew 23 percent; road arrivals grew 5 percent.
- The Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Exhibitions sector generated $94.7 million in 2025, up from $84.8 million in 2024, across 165 hosted international and regional events.
- The RDB has stated that tourism revenue is up 47 percent since the Arsenal partnership began in 2018.
- Visitor growth in 2025 was led by the East African Community and the DRC, with the RDB describing "steady growth" from Europe, North America, Asia, and the rest of Africa, without ranking those four regions against each other.
Separately, Rwanda's National Institute of Statistics reported that between November 2025 and January 2026, a three-month window, the country earned $161.5 million in tourism revenue. North American visitors were named as the top spenders in that specific window, contributing $40.8 million. Most air arrivals in that window came from the United States, with Germany, China, and Japan also cited as major source markets. Gorilla trekking accounted for 71.4 percent of leisure tourism revenue in that same period.
None of these figures can be attributed to a single sponsorship. Rwanda's tourism strategy over this period also included investment in conservation tourism, a push to position Kigali as a conference hub, and partnerships with the NBA's Basketball Africa League, which has played games in Rwanda since 2021.
What isn't confirmed
A few things get repeated in coverage of this story that are worth flagging as unconfirmed, because they don't trace back to a named source:
- There is no published figure from Rwanda's tourism board stating that North America has overtaken Europe as the country's largest overall tourism market. The one specific figure that exists, the $40.8 million in North American spending, covers a single three-month window, not a year-over-year comparison against Europe.
- Neither Arsenal nor the Rwanda Development Board has stated that the human rights criticism, the DRC minister's comments, or the Bayern precedent factored into the decision to end the partnership. Their stated reason is strategic diversification.
- No reporting has confirmed why Paris Saint-Germain and Atlético Madrid, which still carry Visit Rwanda sponsorships, have not made a similar move. Reuters has reported that Rwanda pushed back against criticism of all three club deals as a group, but nothing has changed for PSG or Atlético as of this writing.
Questions this leaves open
- If the ending is purely strategic, why did it follow, rather than precede, Bayern's restructuring under near-identical pressure?
- Why does Rwanda's new sponsorship activity concentrate around teams owned by the same person who owns Arsenal, rather than a broader set of new markets?
- What would it take for Rwanda to publicly confirm or deny that the DRC conflict played any role in this specific decision, given that it has already responded publicly to criticism of the deal?
- Will Paris Saint-Germain or Atlético Madrid face the same sequence of events that preceded Bayern's and Arsenal's moves, and if their deals continue unchanged, what does that suggest about what actually drove the other two?
None of these questions have public answers right now. That's the honest state of the record as of this writing.
Sources
- Arsenal FC, official statement, "Visit Rwanda update," arsenal.com
- Rwanda Development Board / AllAfrica, "Rwanda: Arsenal, Visit Rwanda Agree to End Partnership in June 2026," November 19, 2025
- AllAfrica, "Rwanda Says It Has Expanded Into New Global Markets After Arsenal Deal Ends," November 20, 2025
- Reuters, "Rwanda says DRC criticism of Arsenal, Bayern and PSG deals threatens regional peace"
- Al Jazeera, "Bayern Munich veers from Rwanda sponsorship after criticism," August 8, 2025
- Associated Press, "Bayern Munich shifts away from 'Visit Rwanda' sponsorship after criticism"
- The New Times (Rwanda), "Rwanda's tourism revenues hit Rwf1tn in 2025 – report," April 29, 2026
- The New Times (Rwanda), "Rwanda's tourism generates $647m in 2024, eyes over $700m in 2025"
- Xinhua, "Rwanda's tourism revenues soar to 685 mln USD in 2025: report," April 28, 2026
- Face2Face Africa, "How Rwanda earned $161 million from foreign tourism in just 90 days"
- Black Enterprise, "Rwanda Earns $161 Million From Tourism In Just 90 Days"
- ESPN, "Los Angeles Rams, LA Clippers sign deals to promote Rwanda," September 29, 2025
- Sportcal, "Visit Rwanda lands in US with LA Clippers, Rams sponsorships"
- Visit Rwanda / therams.com, "Visit Rwanda enters multi-year sponsorship agreement with Los Angeles Rams, SoFi Stadium and Hollywood Park"
- Goal.com, "Arsenal announce end of controversial sponsorship deal with Visit Rwanda after eight years"
- Yahoo Sports, "Arsenal to end Visit Rwanda sleeve sponsorship"
- Goal.com, "Arsenal unmoved on £10m-a-year Visit Rwanda sleeve sponsorship despite Supreme Court ruling"