Sandefjord

The 2006 cup final settled quickly. Sandefjord lost 0:3 to Fredrikstad.

The club exists because two others stopped competing with each other. IL Runar and Sandefjord Ballklubb merged on 10 September 1998.

Promotion out of 1. divisjon came in 2014, as champions, and it is the second of the club's two league titles. Neither was won in the top flight. That changed in 2025, when the club finished fifth — its best season since the merger.

Home is Jotun Arena, opened on 21 July 2007 and renamed twice since, holding just under 6,600. It replaced nothing grand. The club plays in blue throughout — shirts, shorts, socks — and answers to two nicknames, Guttane and, less often now, Hvalfangerne, the whalers, after the industry that built the town and left it.

The fixtures that matter locally are against FK Tønsberg, 20 minutes up the road, though the meetings that have carried more at stake in recent seasons have been with Sarpsborg 08.

Fifth place raises the question of whether 2025 was a ceiling or a floor. The squad that produced it has to prove the same points return is repeatable in a division where Sandefjord has historically been fighting a different battle.