FC Basel 1893

Basel's football club traces back to a group of local players who wanted a proper city side to represent Basel in the Swiss league system taking shape in the 1890s, formalised as Fussball Club Basel 1893 on 15 November of that year. The "1893" has stayed fixed to the name ever since, worn as part of the identity rather than a founding footnote.

No club in Switzerland has won more. Basel took the Nationalliga A title 21 times and the Swiss Cup 14 times, and much of that record traces to a run through the 1960s and 1970s under coach Helmut Benthaus, who collected seven championships in six years. Otto Hitzfeld top-scored for the league in 1972/73 before going on to a coaching career that outgrew Basel entirely. The club never got past Switzerland's borders to lift a European trophy — the closest it came was two Europa League semi-finals, losing to Chelsea in 2012/13 and to Sevilla in 2015/16 — but no Swiss side has reached the Champions League group stage as often.

Marco Streller spent twelve years in red and blue and finished as the Swiss Super League's all-time leading scorer with 119 goals, a record built entirely at one club rather than assembled across a career. Xherdan Shaqiri came up through Basel's academy before his career carried him abroad, and returned to the club in 2024.

St. Jakob-Park holds 38,512 for league matches, trimmed to 37,500 when UEFA rules apply. The fixture against FC Zürich carries the weight of two rival cities in German-speaking Switzerland, while matches with BSC Young Boys have sharpened into a title fight of their own over the past two decades; a once-fierce local rivalry with BSC Old Boys has faded as that club settled into the lower divisions. Basel added the Swiss Cup again in 2025, the fourteenth, and returns to the new season still measured against the standard it set for itself in Swiss football.