Jagiellonia

Jagiellonia Białystok enter the Ekstraklasa this season still measured against the mark they set in 2023/24, when the club won the Polish championship for the first time in 104 years of trying. Two runner-up finishes, in 2016/17 and 2017/18, had come closest before that, along with a Polish Cup in 2009/10 and the Super Cup that followed it.

The title had not looked likely for long stretches of the club's history. Between 1994 and 2007, Jagiellonia fell as far as the fourth tier of Polish football before working its way back up to the Ekstraklasa, the division it eventually topped.

Home games are played at the Chorten Arena, a name the ground took on in September 2024 after years as the Stadion Miejski, with seating for 22,372. Supporters know the team as Jaga. The fixture that carries the most weight is against Legia Warsaw; matches with Lechia Gdańsk and the local derby against ŁKS Łomża also draw attention.

Taras Romańczuk captained the side that won the 2024 title. Tomasz Frankowski, one of the club's leading scorers in an earlier era, went on to sit in the European Parliament after his playing career ended.

That championship side traced its roots to 30 May 1920, when soldiers of the 42nd Infantry Regiment stationed in Białystok formed a sports club of their own. It took the name BKS Jagiellonia in 1932, folded under financial strain in 1938, and returned only in 1957, when two other Białystok clubs, Budowlani and Sparta, merged to revive it.