Eurofarm Pelister

Eurofarm Pelister enters the new season as the team every rival in the country is chasing, not the other way round.

The name itself carries a merger. What plays today under the Eurofarm Pelister banner formed in 2019, when the historic Bitola side joined forces with RK Eurofarm Rabotnik, a much younger club founded in 2011. Pelister's own story goes back further than its official founding date of 1955 — the side traces its handball roots to 1946, when it started out as Pelagonija, the first handball club anywhere in Macedonia.

Domestically the club has been champion nine times and cup winner five, but its best-remembered European run came earlier: reaching the final of the EHF Challenge Cup in 2001–02, where Skjern Håndbold beat them to the trophy. Kiril Lazarov is one of the most recognisable names to come through the club.

Home matches at the Sports Hall Boro Čurlevski come with a reputation attached. The club's supporters, known as the Čkembari, have made the arena one of the least comfortable places in the region for a visiting side, and a line credited to Vlado Šola and Lino Červar — that whoever hasn't played in Bitola doesn't know what real support looks like — is still repeated about the place. Červar himself returned to the bench in 2026.

None of that support is needed more than against HC Vardar. The two sides' meetings are known simply as the Eternal Derby, and for Pelister there is a second, more local edge to it as well.