Norrköping Women

My Cato was 16 when she first played for the senior side in 2016. That promotion came out of a second-place finish in the Elitettan in 2022 — the first time IFK Norrköping had reached the Swedish top flight in women's football. Cato left for Crystal Palace of the Women's Super League in September 2024, a few months before the club's next first.

The club itself is younger than most of the sides it now meets. It was put together on 4 November 2009, when Lindö FF and Saltängens BK merged with backing from Åby IF, Eneby BK and Smedby AIS. IFK Norrköping had run a women's section in the 1970s, but that had been wound up long before.

The cup run of 2024/25 took the club further than the league had. On 21 May 2025 they played Hammarby IF at the 3Arena in Stockholm in the final of the Svenska Cupen, their first, and lost 0–2. There is still no trophy in the cabinet — no league title, no cup, and no runners-up finish in the Damallsvenskan either.

Home is the PlatinumCars Arena, which has held about 16,000 since it was rebuilt in 2009 and has carried three other names in living memory: Idrottsparken, Nya Parken, Östgötaporten. The blue and white is borrowed from the men's club.

The fixture that matters most is the Östgötaderbyt against Linköpings FC, the other Östergötland side, and it is the one date the region marks. Sofia Hjern, a national-team goalkeeper, is behind the current back line. Having reached a final and stayed in the top division, the club's task now is to make the second of those the ordinary state of things.