The 2025/26 Scottish Premiership season just wrapped up, and Hearts finished it the way they started: winning the last Edinburgh derby of the campaign. Four meetings, four different outcomes. That is the kind of rivalry this is. It has been this way since 1875, and the numbers behind it are genuinely worth a look.
A Season That Had Everything
The four derbies in 2025/26 produced a result for every occasion. Hearts edged the opener at Tynecastle 1-0 with a stoppage-time header from Craig Halkett. Then Hibs won 3-2 at Easter Road on 27 December. Hearts took the third encounter 1-0 in February. The final one, in April, went Hearts’ way again, 2-1. Hearts won the season series, though Hibs made them work for every point.
That pattern of tight, chaotic matches tracks across the whole history of this fixture. Across all competitions since 1875, Hearts and Hibs have met more than 670 times. The overall record:
- Hearts: 294 wins
- Hibs: 209 wins
- Draws: 166
Hearts’ lead looks comfortable. It is not, really. It reflects 150 years of accumulated margins, not dominance. Plenty of those wins came in decades when Hibs were barely competitive, and bestcasino.com would have had slim pickings offering odds on them. Context matters in a rivalry this old.
The Records That Stick
The record numbers from this fixture are the kind that take a moment to process. A few that stand out:
- The biggest competitive win belongs to Hibs: 7-0 at Tynecastle on New Year’s Day 1973. At Tynecastle. Seven.
- The highest attendance was 65,860, recorded on 2 January 1950 at Easter Road. Hearts won 2-1.
- The most goals in a single match: Hearts beat Hibs 10-2 in 1893, though that was a friendly played to mark Hibs’ return after the club briefly went out of existence due to financial problems.
That last one requires a moment. Hibs collapsed financially, ceased playing, then came back. Hearts welcomed them back to competitive football by scoring ten goals. There is a certain tradition in Edinburgh football of being completely merciless at the worst possible moment.
On the individual side, Bobby Walker of Hearts holds the overall goalscoring record with 33 against Hibs across all matches, mostly in non-competitive games between 1896 and 1919. The competitive tally belongs to John Robertson, 27 goals, which earned him the nickname “The Hammer of Hibs” from Jambos supporters. Gordon Smith tops the Hibs list with 15.
Only four players have ever scored for both clubs in the derby: Gordon Smith, Alan Gordon, Ralph Callachan, and Darren Jackson. Small club. Awkward reunions.
The Match Nobody Forgets
The 2012 Scottish Cup Final at Hampden Park sits above everything else in the modern era, and the numbers explain why. Three figures tell the whole story:
- 51,041 fans attended, making it the largest Edinburgh derby in decades.
- The final score was 5-1 to Hearts, with Rudi Skacel scoring twice and the match effectively over before the hour mark.
- Hibs had not won the Scottish Cup since 1902. They went to Hampden 110 years later and lost by four goals.
It was the first time the two clubs had met in a Scottish Cup Final since 1896. The build-up called it the “salt and sauce final.” Hearts won every league derby that season too. For Hibs supporters, it was a very long bus ride back to Edinburgh.
What the Data Actually Tells You
Strip out the nostalgia and the numbers say a few consistent things about this rivalry. Hearts have the historical edge in competitive fixtures, 152 wins to Hibs’ roughly 120. But the gap in recent seasons is much narrower, and Hibs have had stretches of genuine derby dominance, most notably the early 1970s under Eddie Turnbull and patches of the modern Premiership era.
The fixture also has a habit of producing outsized drama regardless of where either team sits in the table. The September 1990 match, which Hearts won 3-0, was so politically charged after a controversial takeover bid that police visited the Hearts dressing room at half-time to warn against scoring a fourth goal. Fifty people were arrested. The match finished before things could escalate further.
Three things the data shows happen in this fixture more than logic suggests they should:
- The team in worse form wins more often than you would expect
- Late goals decide the result at a rate that makes a mockery of any pre-match prediction
- The winning margin rarely reflects how the match felt while it was happening
The 2025/26 season illustrated all three. With the 2026/27 fixture list due in mid-June and both clubs already planning their summers, the next instalment is a few months away. The numbers favour Hearts. Edinburgh will spend those months arguing about it anyway.
