Oued Akbou

Derby Kabyle only became a fixture on the calendar in 2024, when Olympique Akbou reached Ligue 1 and found itself facing JS Kabylie for the first time in the top flight. It is not a local quarrel over a shared city — JSM Béjaïa and MO Béjaïa already settle that in Béjaïa itself — but a contest between two clubs that both claim the Kabyle lion as their own: JS Kabylie plays as Les Lions de Kabylie, Akbou as Les Lions de la Soummam, named for the valley that runs through their town.

Akbou went up from Régional I in 2021–22, took Ligue 3 the following season, and won Ligue 2 in 2023–24, a run that carried the club from the seventh tier to the first.

Promotion also moved the club out of its own ground. The Martyrs Stadium in Akbou, built for 11,500, does not meet Ligue 1 requirements, so home matches now go to the Stade de l'Unité Maghrébine in Béjaïa, which holds around 20,000.

Karim Takka has owned the club since 2018, the year the climb began, and Abdelkader Amrani took the side up through its most recent promotions as head coach. Further back, the name most associated with Akbou is Kamal Djabour, who started out at the club in the late 1970s before an international career and coaching spells that took him as far as AJ Auxerre and the Congo national team.