Araz

Nakhchivan has no rival city club to fight for local pride against.

The first version of the club, founded in 1967 as Araz, disappeared with the Soviet Union in 1991. A return in 2000 lasted two seasons before money ran out again in 2002. The current club dates to 18 March 2013, when the authorities of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic ordered it back into existence as Araz-Naxçıvan PFK. It was gone from the Premier League within months — withdrawn after three rounds in November 2014, dropped to regional football, and left to work its way back up on its own terms.

That climb took until 2022/2023, when the club won the First Division for a second time and returned to the top flight. In 2023 came a change less visible on the pitch but decisive off it: ownership was split evenly between the Azerbaijan Football Federations Association and the Trade Unions Council of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, giving the rebuilt club institutional backing it had lacked in its earlier lives.

The results followed. Araz finished eighth in the Premier League in 2023/2024, then took bronze the following season, with Turan Manafov, a full Azerbaijan international, part of the squad that got them there. The same campaign brought a run to the Azerbaijan Cup semi-final, ended there by Qarabağ.

Home games are played at the Nakhchivan City Stadium, which holds 12,800. The club wears white at home and red away, and is known to supporters as the Red Wolves. Bronze in the league and a cup semi-final now sit behind it; what comes next is holding that level, in a competition where Araz has spent most of its history simply trying to still exist.