Bitlis Özgüzelderespor

Extra time, 3-2, Çarşambaspor beaten, and a club that had spent nearly two decades outside professional football was back in the 3. Lig. That result, in the 2025-26 Profesyonelliğe Geçiş Ligi 1. Grup final, closed a stretch that began in 2006, when relegation dropped the side out of the third tier and into the amateur and regional leagues of eastern Anatolia.

The rebuild was not gradual. In 2024 the club was reorganized outright, and for the 2025-26 season it dropped the Özgüzelderespor name it had carried since 1926 in favour of Bitlis 1916 FSK, a new identity for the same city side. Before that reset came a title that mattered locally rather than nationally: the Bölgesel Amatör Lig in 2021-22, won without a single defeat and sealed with a 3-1 win over Van Yolspor.

None of it changes where the team plays. The Bitlis 8 Ağustos Stadyumu holds 5,000, modest even by regional standards, and it is where both the amateur title and the promotion push were built match by match. What the club carries into the 3. Lig now is less a settled rivalry than a regional one still being written — the eastern amateur and regional circuits of Bitlis, Van and the surrounding provinces, the same territory Van Yolspor came from, and the natural measure for a club that has just climbed back out of it.