Tornado Pekanbaru

The closest Tornado Pekanbaru has come to a national title is a runner-up finish, and it took a full campaign to get there. In the 2024–25 season the club reached the final of the Liga 3 Nusantara, Indonesia's third tier, and lost it to Sumut United on 27 February 2025 at the Indomilk Arena in Tangerang. The defeat still carried them up: the result secured promotion to Liga 2 for 2025–26, the first time the club had reached that level since Junianto bought it from a group of friends in Pekanbaru in 2018 and won the Liga 3 Riau title in his first year in charge.

Junianto, known in Indonesian football as Anto Van Java, had tried more than once to take over PSIS Semarang before turning to Tornado instead, and that history still shapes the fixture list: matches against PSIS are billed as the Derby Panas Jateng, the Hot Central Java Derby. Promotion gave him reason to move the whole operation. Between March and September 2025 the club left Pekanbaru, where PSPS Pekanbaru had just gone up to Liga 1 and left little room in the local market, and resettled in Kendal, Central Java, taking the new name Kendal Tornado FC. The relocation followed infrastructure Junianto already controlled there — the Charlie Sport Center in Salamsari, Boja, and land bought in Kalikangkung.

Yanuar Baehaki carried much of the promotion push, finishing as the competition's best player with eight goals. Stefan Keeltjes now coaches the Kendal-era squad, which has added Brazilian forward Patrick Cruz, after I Wayan Sukadana left the post. Home matches are played in front of a capacity of 12,500.