HC Kriens-Luzern

Kriens sits just south of Lucerne, in the shadow of Mount Pilatus, and for most of the year the town's sporting attention runs through handball rather than football. HC Kriens-Luzern grew out of that setting in 1966, and it stayed a modest fixture in Swiss handball for decades before the top-level programme was split off into its own corporation, HC Kriens-Luzern AG, in 2009 — a change that gave the club a structure built for the level it wanted to reach rather than the one it was playing at.

That level arrived slowly. Promotion to the Nationalliga A came in 2007, almost by accident, after SG Zentralschweiz withdrew from the top flight. A European Cup quarter-final followed in 2011 under Torben Winther, then a Swiss League Playoff Final Four in 2014 under Heiko Grimm — markers of a club edging toward the group it now competes with, without yet beating them when it mattered. The breakthrough had a name attached to it: Andy Schmid, one of the defining figures in Swiss handball, joined as player-coach in 2022 and retired from playing in January 2024, staying on to shape the team from the bench before taking over as head coach ahead of the 2026/2027 season, the year the club also qualified for the EHF Champions League for the first time.

The Swiss Cup came first, in 2023, then again in 2025 and 2026. The Swiss Championship held out longer — runners-up in 2023 and 2024 — until the 2025/2026 season, under coach Thomas Zimmermann, when Kriens-Luzern won the title outright for the first time. The club now plays at the Pilatus Arena, a step up from the old Krauerhalle and its 1,200 seats, in front of crowds still small by European standards but full for the fixture that matters most locally: the Innerschweizer Derby against Wacker Thun, the rival that has met them at both ends of recent finals, in Cup and Championship alike.