Rapid Bucuresti Women

The night Rapid built its name in European handball came in 1964, when the club lifted the Champions League after edging Helsingør IF 14–13 on aggregate. Domestic titles followed in clusters rather than a steady climb: three straight Liga Națională crowns from 1961 to 1963, another in 1967, then a long wait before the league came back to Giulești in 2003 and again in 2022. Between those years sat an IHF Cup, won in 1993 against CSL Dijon by a 50–40 aggregate scoreline, and an EHF Challenge Cup in 2000, beaten out of Randers HK by five goals over two legs.

Founded in 1934 as the handball section of the wider Rapid sports club, the team carries the maroon and white of the parent side and the nickname Giulestencele. The rivalry that defines its calendar runs across the city, against CSM București, in a fixture known simply as the Bucharest Derby — a meeting with no love lost, given how often the league title has passed between the two clubs rather than settling anywhere else.

The Romanian Cup came just once, in 2004, and near misses have outnumbered wins in recent years, with runner-up finishes in the league as recently as 2023 and 2024. For the biggest European nights, the club steps outside its own ground and into the larger Sala Polivalentă; day to day, though, the team is at home in Sala Rapid, in Giulești, in front of crowds that rarely need more than 1,500 seats to make themselves heard.