Jack Wilshere has signed for West Ham United on a three-year contract after departing Arsenal as a free agent following 17 years at the club.

The 26-year-old midfielder, who has won 34 caps for England, becomes Manuel Pellegrini’s fourth summer signing following the arrivals of Issa Diop, Lukasz Fabianski and Ryan Fredericks, another player out of contract.

West Ham are also close to signing the Corinthians centre-back Fabián Balbuena, a 26-year-old who has played for Paraguay, and the arrivals are unlikely to stop there. Talks have resumed talks with Lazio over the midfielder Felipe Anderson and West Ham are keen on the Borussia Dortmund forward Andriy Yarmolenko, with a fee of around £18m mooted for the Ukraine international who has failed to settle in the Bundesliga.

Wilshere, who supported West Ham as a boy, will now fly out to Switzerland to join his new team-mates on their pre-season training camp in Bad Ragaz. His first game on home soil could be a pre-season friendly against Wycombe Wanderers on Saturday.

“It feels good and of course my family and a few of my friends are West Ham fans so everyone’s buzzing,” Wilshere, whose brother and father are also supporters of his new club, said. “People will have seen the picture of me in a West Ham shirt and I’ve got good memories of my childhood supporting West Ham, watching them at Upton Park.”

West Ham’s newly-appointed director of football, Mario Husillos, the former Málaga sporting director, added: “Manuel and I identified him as a target as soon as we joined the club and we are delighted to have succeeded in securing Jack’s signature above a number of other teams. On the biggest stage, he has shown that he has game-changing abilities, as well as having the creativity and intelligence to make a real difference to our squad.”

Wilshere, who joined Arsenal at the age of nine, exited the Emirates Stadium this summer after talks with the new manager Unai Emery left him adamant that his “playing time would be significantly reduced”. He made 197 appearances for Arsenal, 38 of which came last season – his best total since 2013-14 – and said it was always his intention, until contractual discussions with Emery, to remain an Arsenal player.