Hope Fc

Hope FC arrived in the Motsepe Foundation Championship in 2026 as one of South African football's stranger stories: a club that did not exist under that name a year earlier, promoted after winning the ABC Motsepe League National Playoffs, beating North-West University 5–3 on penalties following a 1–1 draw.

The name is new, the club is not. Hope FC continues Sea Point Swifts A.F.C., founded in Sea Point in 1920 and pushed out to Bonteheuwel under apartheid. In 2025 the current owners bought the Swifts' status and competed under that name in the ABC Motsepe League; only after the 2025–26 promotion did the club rebrand as Hope FC, taking the nickname "The Immortals" and settling in Belhar. That double win — the league title and the play-off — came in the same season the badge changed.

Keagan Buchanan, a former Kaizer Chiefs and AmaZulu midfielder, chairs and runs the club; Dylan Dean coached the side through the promotion campaign before Clayton Daniels took charge of the first team. The squad carries some recognisable names for a newly promoted side, among them Ayanda Patosi, once of Bafana Bafana, and Edmilson Chaney, an academy graduate who signed for Orlando Pirates and was loaned straight back to the club that produced him.

Matches are played at Athlone Stadium, which holds 34,000, in black at home and red away, with a deep blue kit kept in reserve.

Across the city, Cape Town City FC remain the club Hope FC's supporters measure themselves against. The Cape Town Derby predates the new name by years.