JS El Biar

Derby algérois days at the Complexe Sportif Abderrahmane Ibrir mean RC Kouba, USM El Harrach or NA Hussein Dey across the pitch, and it is football, not the club's stronger sport, that carries that rivalry. JS El Biar has spent most of its history known for something else entirely: the handball section, HBC El-Biar, which by March 2026 had gone 100 consecutive matches unbeaten in the women's game.

Football at El Biar took far longer to catch up. The club was formed in Algiers in 1944, and for 82 years its senior team never reached the Algerian Ligue 1. That changed in 2025–26, when El Biar won the Ligue 2 Amateur Group Centre-Ouest and secured promotion for the 2026–27 season. Djamel Menad, Abdelhak Benchikha and Djamel Belmadi have all been named among the players who passed through the club, though none of them were there to see it finally reach the top flight.

The ground itself holds 3,000, modest even by the standards of a side stepping up to Ligue 1 for the first time, and blue, red and white have stayed the club's colours through both the long wait and the season that ended it.

What El Biar has still not done is prove itself at that level. Ligue 1 is unfamiliar ground for a club whose identity for eight decades was built in the handball hall rather than on the football pitch.