The Stars Who Joined the Turkish Süper Lig in 2026: Salah, Lukaku, Vlahovic and the Rest
When Mohamed Salah walked out at Papara Park on 6 August, what he said was that he had never experienced anything like it in his life.
Coming from a player with nine seasons at Liverpool and a Champions League medal, that sentence tells you most of what this summer has meant for the Turkish top flight.
The window in one table
The 2026-27 registration period opened on 22 June and closes on 4 September. It is not over, and the picture is already unusual.
| Club | Signings so far | Headline arrival |
|---|---|---|
| Trabzonspor | 13 (a club record) | Mohamed Salah |
| Beşiktaş | 8 | Leandro Trossard, Dusan Vlahovic |
| Fenerbahçe | 7 | Romelu Lukaku |
| Galatasaray | 1 | Lesley Ugochukwu |
That last row is the interesting one. The reigning champions stood still while everyone chasing them spent.
Trabzonspor: Salah
The remarkable part of Salah's move is not the fee. It is that there wasn't one.
He had a year left on his Liverpool contract but announced in March that he would leave, after a season in which he scored 12 goals and fell out publicly with then-manager Arne Slot. So Trabzonspor signed one of the most recognisable footballers in the world without paying a transfer fee at all, on a two-year deal at the age of 34.
The career behind that decision: 442 appearances for Liverpool, 257 goals, two Premier League titles, one Champions League.
Salah is not the whole story. Trabzonspor made 13 signings this window, a club record, bringing in Ruslan Malinovskyi from Genoa and Cenk Özkacar from Valencia among others.
In goal, André Onana is there on loan rather than as a signing — a second consecutive season from Manchester United, for a £1.3 million loan fee, with Trabzonspor covering his wages and no option to buy. He made 40 appearances in his first spell, won the Turkish Cup and helped the club finish third. The goalkeeper is familiar; the forward line is entirely new.
Beşiktaş: Trossard and Vlahovic
Beşiktaş built their summer on two moves, and the two fit together.
Leandro Trossard arrived from Arsenal for €18 million plus €2 million in add-ons, making him the second most expensive signing in the club's history. The 31-year-old Belgian signed a 3+1 year deal on reported wages of €6.5 million a season, with the fee paid in six instalments over three years. Talks ran for around four months and accelerated once Trossard finished the 2026 World Cup with Belgium.
Dusan Vlahovic followed on 12 August. The 26-year-old Serbia striker left Juventus for a three-year contract on reported wages of €8 million a season.
Putting them together was not an accident. Trossard drifts inside from wide and does his work around the edge of the box; Vlahovic is a penalty-box centre-forward who lives inside it. One of them vacates space and the other occupies it.
Add Orkun Kökçü from Benfica, Alexander Nübel from Bayern Munich and Salih Özcan from Borussia Dortmund, and Beşiktaş have effectively rebuilt the spine of the team in one window.
Fenerbahçe: Lukaku
Fenerbahçe's biggest move landed on 12 August: Romelu Lukaku, after two seasons at Napoli, for a reported €6 million plus a €2 million option, on wages of around €10 million a year.
Next to Salah and Vlahovic that fee looks modest, and that is rather the point. Fenerbahçe spread this summer across the squad instead of concentrating it in one signing. Mason Greenwood came from Marseille, Nathan Ake from Manchester City, Vedat Muriqi from Mallorca.
Ake is the least discussed and possibly the most stabilising of those. A defender who can play centre-back or left-back and has spent years in Premier League title races is exactly the kind of player you want standing behind all that attacking investment.
Why are Galatasaray so quiet?
The champions have made one signing: Lesley Ugochukwu from Chelsea, returning after a loan spell at Burnley.
There are two readings. The optimistic one is that Galatasaray already have a title-winning squad and see no reason to disturb it. The cautious one is that three of their rivals have strengthened significantly, and the same squad may not produce the same result against a stronger field.
The window runs to 4 September, so the question is still open as this is being written.
How might these teams actually line up?
Nobody knows yet. But the questions are clear enough.
Which side does Salah play at Trabzonspor? His whole career has been built on starting from the right, cutting inside and shooting with his left. That demands a right-back who provides the width he vacates — which is a useful reminder that one player's position also defines the job of the player behind him.
How do Beşiktaş fit Trossard and Vlahovic in together? Vlahovic as the lone striker with Trossard to his left or just behind him. A 4-2-3-1 is the most natural system for that pairing; a 4-3-3 pushes Trossard wider and asks more of him defensively.
Can Lukaku and Greenwood start in the same Fenerbahçe XI? Lukaku gives you weight in the box, Greenwood a threat cutting in from wide. On paper they complement each other. The real question is how many central midfielders are left behind them.
All of these come down to the same thing: eleven names on a team sheet are a list, but eleven players on a pitch are a structure. If you want to test your own version, each club has a page loaded with its current squad — Trabzonspor, Beşiktaş, Fenerbahçe and Galatasaray. Placing the players and then switching formation to watch who moves is the quickest way to work out which pairings genuinely fit.
If you want the systems compared first, the complete guide to football formations covers every shape side by side.
Is this summer genuinely different?
The Süper Lig has signed big names before. What has changed is the profile: these are mostly not players at the end of their careers. Vlahovic is 26, Trossard 31, Lukaku 33. Salah at 34 is the oldest of them, and he was playing Premier League football last season.
Timing explains a lot of it. The 2026 World Cup finished in July, contracts expired in June, and Europe's biggest clubs are pushing to lower their average age. Those three things landing in the same summer opened a gap, and Turkish clubs were in a position to fill it.
Whether any of it works is not knowable in mid-August. What is already clear is that this season's title race, on paper at least, is more crowded than it has been in a long time.
