CFR Pforzheim

In 1906, footballers wearing the colours of 1. FC Pforzheim were crowned champions of southern Germany and went on to finish runners-up in the national championship, the closest the city has come to the top of German football. The same club later won the Baden Cup three times, in 1986/87, 1988/89 and 1992/93, before financial trouble forced it down the divisions and into bankruptcy in 2004.

Across town, VfR Pforzheim had reached Regionalliga Süd, then the second tier, in 1965/66, only to be disqualified and relegated during a financial crisis of its own in 1995. The two clubs merged on 3 July 2010 to form 1. CfR Pforzheim, which continues legally from VfR but marks its birthday from 1896, the year 1. FC Pforzheim was founded.

The new club nearly did not survive its own stadium. A dispute with the city over the bill for rebuilding the Brötzinger Tal ground, now the Kramski-Arena, pushed CfR to the brink of insolvency in 2020. The rebuilding work went ahead anyway, running from 2014 to 2020.

On the pitch, CfR reached the Baden Cup final in 2018, a run that earned the club, then several tiers below the professional game, a place in the DFB-Pokal. It reached the final again in 2023, without winning either time. League football now means the Oberliga Baden-Württemberg, the fifth tier, with FC Nöttingen supplying the closest rivalry in the Pforzheimer Derby.

The rebuilt Kramski-Arena holds 4,500, with 1,400 of those seats.