Šampion Celje

The season now runs in 3. SNL – East, and Šampion arrived there by winning 4. SNL in 2025–26.

That ground is Olimp, in Celje. The second-tier years were played at a venue smaller than most amateur clubs elsewhere use, and the club has never moved from it.

The name came first and the nickname followed: Šampioni, the Champions, which the club then had to go and earn. It started at the bottom, taking the MNZ Celje fifth-tier championship in 2004–05, roughly a decade after being founded on 4 May 1995. The rise from fifth tier to second took seven years; the fall back down took rather less, and the return has taken longer than the climb did.

Light blue at home, orange away. The regional cup — the MNZ Celje Cup — came twice in the years after the drop, in 2014–15 and 2016–17, which is what a club wins while it is rebuilding rather than while it is climbing.

The regional structure that produced those cups is also where the opposition comes from. MNZ Celje is the association covering Celje and the surrounding district, and every side Šampion met in that competition was a neighbour — the fixtures are short journeys, the crowds know each other, and the third-tier East group keeps much of the same map. A club of this size measures itself against the teams down the road, because those are the ones it plays most often and the ones its 500 seats fill up for.