LASK Linz

In 1964/65, the club became the first side from outside Vienna to win the national title, sealing the double the same season.

The club's roots sit oddly with its own crest. Athletiksportklub Siegfried was founded on 7 August 1899, but LASK's branding leans on 1908, the year Linzer Sport-Club formed — its football section joined Siegfried in 1919, and the merged body took the name Linzer Athletik-Sport-Klub that September. The club has been undone and rebuilt more than once since. A 1995 financial crisis pushed it into bankruptcy proceedings, settled only by agreement with creditors. A 1997 merger with local rival FC Linz kept the club alive but split its own support. In between, a licence withdrawal and bankruptcy sent the club down to the third tier in 2012, and it took a rescue by a consortium of local businesspeople, calling themselves Friends of LASK, to keep it going into 2013.

Europe has offered the club its clearest recent measure. In 2019/20, LASK topped a Europa League group that included Sporting and PSV. Domestically, the identity runs through Linz itself: the derby against Blau-Weiß Linz, a club formed in 1997 to carry on FC Linz's tradition, and a separate rivalry with SV Ried over standing in Upper Austria. Jerome Boateng, formerly of Bayern Munich and the German national team, signed with LASK in 2025.

The double retained, LASK head into the new season as champions of Austria for the first time in sixty years, with the Raiffeisen Arena as the stage for defending it.