Energetik

Mingachevir grew up around a hydroelectric dam on the Kur river, and the club that carries the town's name has spent most of its life carrying that identity too: for two decades it played as Energetik, a nod to the power station that gave the city its purpose. Before that it had already changed shirts more than once, running through names such as Tekstilshchik and Kur-Nur as ownership and sponsorship shifted, a pattern common to Soviet-era provincial sides that rarely settled under one banner for long. The club traces back to 1966, and Tekstilshchik is the name under which a young Yuri Romensky kept goal in the late 1960s before moving on to win the Soviet championship with Dynamo Kyiv.

The best years came in the 1990s. Twice the club reached the final of the Azerbaijan Cup, in 1992 and again in 1994/95, and lost both times. Those two runs remain the high point of its history; a fifth-place league finish in the mid-1990s never approached the two cup finals for weight. Since then Mingachevir has mostly stayed in the lower tiers, and the club itself has moved on again, re-established in 2022 and now competing under the name ASTA Mingachevir.

The town has never needed a derby to sharpen its football; Mingachevir has generally had room for only one senior club at a time, so rivalry here has always pointed outward rather than across the city. Home games are played at the Yashar Mammadzade Stadium. The current side has been climbing back: eighth in the Azerbaijan First Division in 2023–24, fourth the following season, and second in 2025–26, with Kenneth Kalunga leading the scoring — enough to send the club into the promotion play-offs for a place in the Azerbaijan Premier League.