Obolon Kyiv

Obolon takes its name from the district on Kyiv's northern edge, built up around the brewery that has long supplied both a sponsor and a nickname to the football club that shares its name: The Brewers.

The side started out on 13 June 1992 as FC Smena, formed at the youth sports school of the same name. The name changed with its backers — Smena-Obolon from 1993, Obolon from the 1995/96 season, then Obolon-PVO between 1997 and 2001 once a new sponsor came in. Financial trouble broke that continuity in 2013, when the club was withdrawn from competition and wound up as a legal entity. A replacement side, Obolon-Brovar, took its place and switched back to the Obolon name in 2020.

Home games are played at Obolon-Arena, which opened on 6 October 2002. The ground holds 5,100, split unevenly between a north stand for 3,800 and a smaller south stand for 1,305.

The honours board belongs mostly to the lower divisions: Second League titles in 1998/99 and 2000/01, an amateur championship in 1994/95 under the name Obolon-Zmina, and First League runner-up finishes in 2008/09 and, under the restored Obolon name, in 2022/23.

Matches against Arsenal-Kyiv, formerly CSKA Kyiv, are known locally as the Small Kyiv derby; games with Dynamo Kyiv and Lokomotiv Kyiv are derbies in the capital but carry no settled name of their own.

Obolon head into the new campaign still short of the promotion that a second-place finish has twice cost them, most recently in 2022/23.