SC Paderborn 07

Paderborn go into the 2026-27 Bundesliga season back among the eighteen after the promotion play-offs against Wolfsburg, won under Ralf Kettemann. It is the third stay in the top flight for a side the German press files under Fahrstuhlmannschaft — elevator club — and the label is earned: up in 2014, down in 2015, down again to the 3. Liga in 2016, back to the second tier in 2018, promoted in 2019, relegated in 2021.

The club that did all this is younger than its badge suggests. On 1 June 1985, TuS Schloss Neuhaus merged with 1. FC Paderborn to form TuS Paderborn-Neuhaus; the name SC Paderborn 07 arrived only in 1997, and the year in it belongs to SV 07 Neuhaus, founded on 20 August 1907. Eight more followed, the last two in 2017 and 2018.

Home is the Home Deluxe Arena, 15,000 seats. The fixture that fills it fastest is the OWL-Derby against DSC Arminia Bielefeld, sixty kilometres up the road; both clubs have spent the past decade crossing on the same staircase, which is what the history between them adds to it.

The first promotion, in 2014, came under André Breitenreiter, and the squad he took up was assembled from players nobody else wanted at that price. Steffen Baumgart repeated it in 2019 with a similar method.

The best-known name to leave, though, never played a Bundesliga minute for the club: Alexander Nübel came through the Paderborn academy.