Nizhny Novgorod

Nizhny Novgorod owe their one season in the Russian Premier League to somebody else's paperwork as much as their own form. In 2020/21 they finished third in the First League, a place that would normally have meant nothing, but second-placed Orenburg failed to clear the licensing process, and the spot passed down the table. Four years earlier the route up had been more straightforward: in 2016/17 the club won its zone of the Second League outright and reached the First League for the first time.

Robert Evdokimov was in charge for that 2019–2021 spell and took the club into the top flight for the only time in its history; Alexander Kerzhakov then managed the debut Premier League campaign, which ended in 11th place. It did not go higher again. Three seasons running, Nizhny Novgorod finished 13th and had to survive relegation play-offs each time, before going down in 2025/26 after a 15th-place finish.

Nikolai Kalinsky has played more matches for the club than anyone else, well past 166 appearances, and Igor Gorbunov, the leading scorer through its formative years, is remembered for the club's first goal in the Premier League. Home games are played at the Sovcombank Arena, which holds 45,000.

The club that did all this is, by registration, not the same one that carried the city's name before it. The current club traces back to 1 June 2015, when it was founded as Volga-Olimpiets — a name it held for barely a year before becoming simply Olimpiets, then Nizhny Novgorod in 2018. A sponsor's prefix, Pari, was attached in 2022 and dropped again in 2026 after a change of ownership, returning the club to the name it had carried since 2018.