Maringá

Maringá are back in Série C after securing promotion there in 2024, a level the city had not seen its football side compete at in years, and the club also went into the 2025 Campeonato Paranaense as a genuine contender, finishing runner-up for a third time. The wait for the state's top prize goes on, but the group that built this run has shown it can hang with Paraná's established sides rather than make up the numbers against them.

None of this existed before 7 July 2010. Maringá Futebol Clube was put together to give the city a team again after Grêmio Maringá, the club that had carried local football through the 1990s, shut down in 2004. It started life as Grêmio Metropolitano Maringá and climbed the state pyramid from the bottom, winning the Paranaense third division in its first year and the second division twice, in 2013 and 2017, before those Copa Paraná titles arrived alongside the second of them.

The rivalries reflect that climb. Against Londrina, the Clássico do Café dates back to 1957, long before this Maringá existed, and the newer club inherited it along with the city's footballing identity. There is also a quieter, more pointed fixture against the old Grêmio Maringá, two clubs from the same place arguing over the same history, and a younger one against Galo Maringá, first played only in 2023.

The badge changed in 2019 to something plainer: just the letters M, F and C, with a nod to the city's cathedral worked into the design. The shirt still carries the black, white and green the club has worn from the start, in vertical stripes rather than a plain tricolour.

Home games are played at the Estádio Regional Willie Davids, which holds a little over 16,000. It is not the stadium the city once had for football in its bigger years, but it is the one this rebuilt club has made its own.