Pirin Blagoevgrad

Promotion in 2021 returned Pirin to Bulgaria's top flight, the fifth time the club has come up as champions of the second tier.

The falls were real. The club that carried the name Pirin from the 1950s went under in 2000, bankrupt. What followed was a decade of splits and mergers: a revived side under the old founding name Македонска Слава — Macedonian Glory — a renaming to Pirin 1922, then a 2008 merger that folded the two competing Pirins into one and made it heir to both histories. Three years later, that club was gone too, bankrupt again. In 2012 the licence was bought from Perun Kresna, and the green and white started once more.

Through all of it the address stayed the same. Hristo Botev Stadium, rebuilt in 2009–10, holds 7,500.

The trophy cabinet has a gap where a cup should be. Four finals, four defeats: 1981, 1992, 1994, and 2009, when Litex won 3–0 and the wait went on. Europe was briefer still — a first round against Hammarby in the 1985/86 UEFA Cup, then Panathinaikos in 1994/95, who scored eight across the tie.

The academy has been the steadier producer. Nikolay Bodurov came through it, as did Petar Zanev.

Pirin's fifth place in 1984/85 remains the ceiling. The club has never won the championship.