Spartans

Promotion arrived in 2023, and for a club outside Scotland's senior professional pyramid there was only one way to get there: through the Lowland League's play-off route into Scottish League Two. It was the first time in Spartans' history that the club had played professional football, the reward for finally having a route upward that had not existed before 2013.

That route began with Spartans becoming one of the founding members of the Lowland Football League and winning its first-ever title. The club had been playing in the East of Scotland set-up since 1976, when it joined the Scottish Football Association after twenty-five years as a team for former Edinburgh University players — founded in 1951 by Elliot Wardlaw and Jimmy Beaumont.

Home since the move into the SFA has been Pilton, in the north of Edinburgh, at what is now called the Vanloq Community Stadium — still known locally as Ainslie Park. Spartans play in white shirts and red shorts, a combination unchanged across the amateur, semi-professional and now professional versions of the club.

None of it includes the Scottish Cup, which Spartans have never won. The bulk of the honours were built instead in the East of Scotland League, the level the club competed at before the Lowland League existed — won outright 9 times, the last in 2010.