Hansa Rostock

The ground on the northern edge of Rostock carries the plain name of the sea beside it — the Ostseestadion, the Baltic Sea stadium. It holds 29,000, and about 9,000 of those are standing places on the terraces. When a European or international fixture comes to town, the terraces have to be fitted with seats and the capacity drops to 25,000. Between 2007 and 2015 the ground was sold under the name DKB-Arena; the old name came back afterwards and has stayed.

The club that plays there was not founded in the ordinary sense. Football at Rostock began as one department of the multi-sport club SC Empor Rostock, from 1 November 1954. East German sport was reorganised in the mid-1960s, and on 28 December 1965 the footballers were cut loose as a body of their own: Fußball Club Hansa Rostock. That is the date the club dates itself from, though the trophies from the 1950s belong to the same lineage — five times runners-up in the East German championship, five times beaten in the cup final.

The one season everything landed was 1990/91, and it landed because the country it was played in was disappearing. Hansa won the last DDR-Oberliga ever contested and took the last FDGB-Pokal, beating Stahl Eisenhüttenstadt 1–0 in the final. The title carried them into the Bundesliga and into the European Cup the following autumn.

What came after was less tidy. Relegation, then promotion as champions of the 2. Bundesliga in 1994/95, then a stretch in the top flight that produced two sixth-place finishes and a DFB-Pokal semi-final in 1999/2000, lost 2–3 to Bayern. Since relegation in 2023–24 the club has played in the 3. Liga.

The Hanseaten play in blue and white, under a cog ship on the badge that gives them their other name. The membership stands above 31,000.