IF Gnistan

Two goals up with the clock past 90 minutes, IF Gnistan were most of the way to a Suomen Cup final in 2002. FC Lahti scored three times to end it. That semi-final remains the deepest the club has gone in the cup.

The club came out of two schools — Svenska Reallyceum and Åggelby Svenska Samskola — whose pupils set it up in 1924 in the Oulunkylä district of Helsinki. The Swedish-language origin sits in the name; the nickname that stuck, Kipinä, is Finnish, and the yellow and blue kit gives them the other one, keltasiniset .

For seven decades the club stayed below the national divisions. Promotion to Ykkönen arrived only in 1995. Two group wins in Kakkonen, in 2016 and 2019, put them back up, and in 2023 they finished second in Ykkönen and went into the play-off for a place in the top flight. They did not win it. They got there anyway: FC Honka went bankrupt, a licence was granted, and Gnistan played their first Veikkausliiga season in 2024.

Their ground in Oulunkylä, now called Markku.fi Areena, had a fire on 13 July 2024, in the middle of that first top-division campaign. A temporary stand completed in April 2025 brought the capacity to 2,700 — small by Veikkausliiga standards.

Playing in Helsinki means the fixtures that matter are decided by geography.