Gareji

Sagarejo sits in the Kakheti wine region, east of Tbilisi, and for most of its recent existence its football club had little to show visitors beyond the name. FC Gareji plays its home matches at the Central Stadium, which holds 2,000 people, and the club carries the town's identity into a league system it only recently learned to climb.

The rise started in 2018, when Gareji won the Eastern Group D of the regional league and earned promotion out of the lower tiers. A year later, still in the fourth division, the club reached the semi-final of the Georgian Cup, losing to Lokomotivi Tbilisi — the first time a fourth-tier side in Georgia had gone that far. The cup kept producing surprises: quarter-final appearances followed in 2021 and again in 2024.

Leva Papava carried the attack through the club's climb up Erovnuli Liga 2, finishing top scorer with 23 goals in 2023 and 27 in 2024. The first of those seasons ended in heartbreak: Gareji finished second and lost a promotion play-off to Samtredia 5–4 on aggregate. The second attempt did not fail. Gareji won Erovnuli Liga 2 outright in 2024 and reached the Erovnuli Liga, Georgia's top flight, for the first time since the club's founding in 1960.

The 2025 season put that promotion to the test. Gareji finished ninth and were sent back down through the relegation play-off, closing the door on a single season at the top before it could turn into a foothold.