U. De Deportes Women

Universitario's women's side head into another season chasing a title that has slipped away three years running. Alianza Lima beat them to the Liga Femenina crown in 2021, then again in 2024 and 2025, the last of those finals settled 0-0 away and 0-2 at home. It leaves a squad built for the top of the table with silverware to show for everything except the games that decide it.

The women's section has carried the cream-and-white shirt since 1952, older than the national championship itself, which did not kick off until 1996. Once it did, Universitario dominated it: 10 league titles between 1996 and 2023, a run few rivals in Peruvian women's football can match. The section sits inside the same club structure as the men's team, sharing a single legal identity rather than running as its own entity, and its games at Estadio Alberto Gallardo are still built around the old rituals, including the "Noche Crema Femenina" fixtures that draw the ground's colours out in force.

The rivalry with Alianza Lima now defines the club's recent history more than any of those league wins. Their meetings, known as the Clásico de mujeres, have gone Alianza's way at the moments that mattered most, and a second fixture against Sporting Cristal, the Clásico Moderno, keeps Lima's derby weekends busy through the season. On the pitch, Colombian forward Manuela González led the scoring in 2024, and last year's arrival, Colombian veteran Catalina Usme, brought a name with continental pedigree into a squad still searching for the finish it has lacked in three straight finals.

What Universitario has not done since 2023 is win the one match that ends a season. Until that changes, the ten stars in the club's history sit next to a more recent run of near misses against the one rival it cannot get past.