Bucovina Rădăuţi

Bucovina Rădăuți go into the season as reigning Liga III champions, back in the third tier after a promotion that closed out 2023–24, with the club chasing a return to something closer to Divizia B football than Rădăuți has seen in years.

The name has outlasted the club that first carried it. Football in Rădăuți dates to 1950, when the side played as Spartac, then cycled through Progresul, Sportul Muncitoresc, ASM and Metalul before settling on Bucovina in 1990–91. That version folded out of Divizia C in 1993. What plays today is a different entity: in 2012 the municipality took the promotion won by Bucovina Frătăuții Noi in Liga IV and relocated it to Rădăuți under the CSM Bucovina name, effectively restarting the club as city-owned.

Two Liga III titles, in 2020–21 and 2023–24, bookend the club's best modern run, and a Round of 32 appearance in the Cupa României in 2018–19 stands as its deepest cup run. None of it carries quite the weight of the Derby Sucevean against Foresta Suceava, a fixture Rădăuți fans called the "Derby de foc" for how little love passed between the two sides. Foresta stopped fielding a professional team in 2023–24, and the derby went with it.

Dorin Goian took over as manager in 2017 and stayed three years, the longest spell of the CSM era, before Daniel Stoica picked up the reins this year with captain Ionuț Plămadă having filled in as caretaker in between. Games are played at the Municipal Stadium, a 2,000-seat ground that has room for barely a fraction of Rădăuți's population.