Irkutsk

Ivan Yakovlev spent the 2025/26 season top-scoring in the Russian Cup's Path of Regions with five goals. That says most of what there is to say about FC Irkutsk.

The club grew out of city amateur football, taking the Irkutsk championship and cup in both 2020 and 2021 before adding the Siberian and Far Eastern amateur title in 2022. Admission to the Second League followed in 2023, and the results held up: third place that year, fourth in 2024, third again in 2025. Vadim Bogdanov scored the club's first professional goal in July 2023, against Zvezda St Petersburg.

Green runs through the badge and the shirts, a nod to the forests around Lake Baikal, and the crest carries a Babr, the mythical beast that stands for the city. The supporters call themselves Irkutyane. Games between the two were billed as the Irkutsk Derby, a fixture that began in May 2022 with a 4-3 win for the newer side.

Home matches were played at the Trud Stadium on Karl Marx Street, though for a stretch in the 2024/25 season the league barred the ground's natural pitch, and Irkutsk had to shift fixtures to the far smaller Shakhtyor Stadium in Cheremkhovo.

None of the results on the pitch settled the arrears off it. Salaries stopped arriving from January 2026, and by July the club had withdrawn from the Second League and the Russian Cup altogether, reorganised into a youth sports school.