Werder Bremen Women

Long before handball had its own following in Bremen, the city's biggest sporting name was already built around football, and it was inside that structure — SV Werder Bremen, founded in 1899 — that a women's handball department eventually took shape, growing without the fanfare that followed the men's side of the club.

The team plays in front of no more than 400 people at the Klaus-Dieter-Fischer-Halle, a ground that keeps matches close and loud rather than grand. Known as Die Grün-Weißen, the Green-Whites have spent their history mostly one level below the top flight, a pattern broken twice by Regionalliga Nord titles, in 1976–77 and again in 2008–09, the second of which sent them up into the 2. Bundesliga, where they have since stayed for eleven straight seasons.

Neither the Bundesliga nor the DHB-Pokal has come their way — their deepest cup run stopped at the round of sixteen, first in 2007–08 and again in 2021–22 — but staying power has counted for more than silverware here. Every meeting with Hamburger SV still carries the weight of the Nordderby, a fixture with no love lost between the two northern sides.

Tessa Budelmann left the academy and came back to wear the shirt again, the kind of return clubs like to point to when talking about identity. Off the court, change arrived this year: Timm Dietrich's long spell in charge ended after the 2024–25 season, handing the bench to Renee Verschuren, a former Dutch international now tasked with keeping Werder's women competitive in a division they have made their home for more than a decade.