Union Abong-Mbang

Union Sportive d'Abong-Mbang open the season back in the MTN Elite One after twenty-seven years away, promotion arriving as champions of the Elite Two for 2025/2026. The trophy was presented to the club at home, in the East Region town that gives it its name.

The wait shaped the club more than the return itself. Twenty-seven years is long enough that a squad, a president and a set of rivalries all changed shape before the top flight came back into view.

Locally they are known as Les Américains, or Les Américains de l'Est — the Americans of the East — a nickname carried through the Elite Two years without the club ever having played outside Cameroon. Their sharpest recent needle has been with Aigle Royal de la Menoua, a rivalry built less on history than on the disciplinary flashpoints the two sides generated in Elite Two meetings.

President Oyal Charmant has used the promotion to reshape the squad for a higher level, bringing in Brazilian recruits José de Lima Da Sylva and Breno Thiago Sylva. Founded in 1954, Union Abong-Mbang now has to prove in the Elite One that the season that ended the wait was a start rather than a peak.