Borac Banja Luka

Borac Banja Luka arrive at the 2025/26 season as back-to-back champions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, having retained the title in 2025 after taking it in 2024, 2021 and, first of all, 2011. The 2024/25 campaign carried the club into unfamiliar territory in Europe: a first appearance in the league phase of the UEFA Conference League, followed by a run to the last 16 — the best result by a Bosnian side in a European competition in recent memory.

The club was founded on 4 July 1926 as Radnički sportski klub Borac, the Workers' Sports Club; among its founders was Veselin Masleša, later a Yugoslav national hero, who proposed the name. Krajišnik, the city's other major club before the Second World War, was dissolved once the war ended, leaving Borac as Banja Luka's only significant side ever since.

Two results anchor the club's European memory. In 1975, on its continental debut, Borac beat Luxembourg's Rumelange 9-0 in the Cup Winners' Cup, then knocked out Anderlecht 1-0 — the only side to beat the Belgians that season, in which Anderlecht went on to lift the trophy. In 1988 Borac won the Yugoslav Cup while playing in the Second League, still the only time a second-tier club has taken that competition; Senad Lupis scored the winner and Slobodan Karalić saved a penalty. Amid the war in 1992, the club added the Mitropa Cup, beating Hungary's BVSC on a goal from Vitomir Stavljanin.

Red shirts with blue vertical stripes give the club its nickname, the Red-Blues. Zvezdan Mišimović, formerly of the Bosnia national team, now serves as club president. Home matches are played at the Gradski stadion, holding just over 10,000. The main domestic rivalry now runs against Željezničar Sarajevo, pitting the country's two largest cities against each other as Borac looks to defend its league position through the new season.