Linfield

Linfield begin the season as they so often do at Windsor Park: with silverware already in the cabinet. The 2025/26 League Cup, lifted before a ball was kicked in the new Premiership campaign, was the club's thirteenth in the competition, a record no rival in Northern Ireland comes close to matching, and it arrives on top of the league title Linfield carried into the season as defending champions.

The club traces back to March 1886, when workers at the Ulster Spinning Company's Linfield Mill, on Sandy Row south of Belfast city centre, formed a team under the name Linfield Athletic Club. The name shortened soon after, but the mill stayed in it.

Windsor Park has been home since 1890, though it took until 1905 for the arrangement to settle for good. It holds 18,434, all seated, and since 2025 has carried a sponsor's name, Clearer Twist National Stadium at Windsor Park, attached to the ground under a new commercial deal.

Fifty-seven league championships and forty-four Irish Cups make Linfield the most decorated club the country has produced, but the run that still gets talked about happened away from home turf. In 1966/67 they reached the European Cup quarter-final, beating Luxembourg's Aris Bonnevoie 9-4 on aggregate, the 6-1 first leg still the club's biggest win in Europe, then seeing off Norway's Vålerenga 5-2. CSKA Sofia held them to a 2-2 draw in Belfast on 1 March 1967 before winning the second leg 1-0 to end the run.

More recent European nights have had their own drama, none louder than the Europa League tie against Qarabağ in 2019/20, settled 3-2 at Windsor Park on the back of a hat-trick from Shane Lavery, the kind of night that gets replayed in conversation long after the season that produced it is forgotten.