Kolkheti Poti

Poti is a port city on Georgia's Black Sea coast, and for over a century the port has decided how the city's football club fares. Kolkheti-1913 grew out of that dockside world, and its fortunes have tracked the port's own — a link that has cut both ways.

The club dates to 1913, making it the oldest still playing in Georgia, and passed through the names Kolkhida and Kolkheti before settling on its current one in the 1990s. In Soviet-era competition it won the Georgian SSR championship in 1978 and 1988, and once independence arrived, it opened the very first match of Georgia's national championship in 1990. The following decade was its strongest: two runner-up finishes, three third-place seasons, and regular trips into the UEFA Cup and the Intertoto Cup.

Then, in 2006, a change of management at Poti's port cost the club its main backer, and with it went the money to finish the season — this despite sitting tenth in 2005/06. The club withdrew rather than play on with nothing behind it. Debt caught up again in 2018, when a six-point deduction sent it down to the First Division, and a lost play-off dropped it further still, into the third tier for the 2019–20 campaign.

The recovery took shape from 2022, when the club won its group in the First League to return to Erovnuli Liga 2, then topped that division in 2023 to earn a place back in the top flight. Davit Kvirkvelia, long a fixture in Georgia's national side as a player, took charge as head coach in 2024 — the same year the club had to rent a ground in Kobuleti after its own stadium, Fazisi, fell short of UEFA requirements, before returning home in March 2025. Fazisi holds 6,000, and the team plays in blue at home, white away.

Top-flight survival did not hold. Kolkheti-1913 dropped back to Erovnuli Liga 2 at the end of the 2025 season, with the games against Dila and Gareji — the rival it has met most often chasing places in that division — the ones that carry the weight now.