Balzan FC

The 2018/19 Maltese FA Trophy is the one silverware that still sets Balzan apart from most of the island's clubs, and it came the hard way: a goalless final against Valletta settled by penalties, won 5-4. Two years earlier the club had already reached a cup final and lost it on spot-kicks, to Sliema Wanderers.

That trophy sat at the centre of a run few clubs from outside the island's traditional big four have matched. Between 2015 and 2020, Balzan qualified for the UEFA Europa League five seasons running, and twice, in 2017 and 2018, finished as league runners-up. The club had only reached the Premier League for the first time in 2003, and went straight back down after finishing ninth; promotion in 2010/11, won at the first attempt after a title in the second tier.

Balzan plays as Ta' Qali National Stadium, the shared ground that hosts most of Malta's top flight, in red home shirts with an all-black change kit. There is no stadium of their own in the town from which the club takes its name; the Victor Tedesco Stadium in Ħamrun is sometimes listed as an alternative venue, but Ta' Qali is where the club is actually based. The rivalry that means most locally is with Lija Athletic, a village side from the same central region, and the fixture is known simply as the derby — nobody has bothered giving it a grander name. Games against Floriana draw attention too, though without the derby tag.

Founded in 1937 as Balzan Youths, the club only settled on Balzan F.C. in June 2012. Nigerian forward Alfred Effiong was among the most productive players of the mid-2010s side that pushed into Europe, and it was that same era's Europa League run that put Balzan in front of Moldova's Speranța, a fixture few at the club could have imagined a decade earlier when they were still fighting clear of the Third Division, won in 1999/00. The 2025/26 season added a second First Division title to the one from 2010/11.