Istaravshan

Between 1981 and 1984 Istaravshan held the Tajik championship four years running, a stretch built on a squad that also lifted the national cup in 1981. Nothing since has matched it, though 1995 brought a return to the runners-up spot, and that same season a forward named Zokir Berdikulov scored 42 of the club's 60 league goals, a single-season record in the Tajik top flight that still stands. Berdikulov later played for the national team, scoring against Guam in World Cup 2002 qualifying.

The club was known for years as Trikotazhnik, a name tied to the textile trade that gave Istaravshan its old nickname, the Craftsmen. Relegation eventually cost it top-flight status, and the comeback took patience: promotion back to the Higher League came in 2018 after winning the First League, and two years later the club added the Football League Cup, with captain Ilkhom Barotov finishing that season as the championship's top scorer on 18 goals.

Home games are played at Istaravshan-Arena, in front of a 20,000 capacity that dwarfs anything the club draws on an ordinary matchday, in the yellow and black now tied to the nickname Northern Tigers. On the bench, Makhmadjon Habibulloev, a Merited Coach of Tajikistan who had earlier managed the national side, took charge in 2021 before the job passed, by 2025/26, to Uzbek coach Sherali Bobokulov.

Locally, the rivalry that matters is regional: four Sughd Province championships, most recently in 2017, mark Istaravshan out among the clubs of the north, and it is against that Sughd company — not the capital's giants — that the club measures itself season to season.