Zhenys

Astana got its team the way most Soviet cities did, as a works side handed a place in the system rather than a club anyone chose to build: in 1964 the Tselinograd side was registered as a masters-level team under the name Dinamo. The decades since piled up a thicket of names — Tselinnik, Tsesna, Astana, Astana-1964 — before the current identity, Zhenis, meaning victory, was revived in 2021, with the club tracing its lineage straight back to that 1964 registration.

The best of it came in a tight run either side of 2000. Zhenis took the Kazakhstan championship in 2000, 2001 and 2006, and in 2001 added the cup to make it a double. Vladimir Dergach was the coach behind that 2001 title and the cup wins either side of it, and the same season carried Arsen Tlehugov to 30 goals, still the most anyone has scored in a single Kazakh league campaign. Further back, under Soviet naming, the club had already won the Kazakh SSR Cup in 1968 and 1986 and topped the Second League's Vostok zone in 1984.

Yevgeni Lovchev spent two seasons at the club either side of the 2001 double and was named Kazakhstan's footballer of the year in 2002. The current home is the Astana Arena, holding 30,000; before 2014 the club played at the stadium named for Kazhymukan Munaitpasov.

Whatever name is on the shirt, the shirt itself has not changed — yellow and black since the club first pulled it on as a factory team in Tselinograd.